Yucca

Common Names: Narrow leaf yucca, fine leaf
yucca, bear grass, mesa yucca, Indian
cabbage, pamilla, amole,
Spanish bayonet, Joshua tree,
datil, Spanish dagger








Latin Name:
Yucca angustissima
Yucca – Named after the root of the cassava plant from which tapioca is made (yucca is
a Carib word), perhaps because
of the similarity of the roots
Angustissima – narrow-leafed

Navajo name: Tsa’aszi’ts’ooz - narrow yucca (Talawosh, ‘water suds,’ name for root; Nidoodloho, ‘the green fruit’; Nideeshjiin, ‘stalk black,’ name for young, dark stalk; Nideesgai, ‘stalk white,’ name for taller stalk

Description & Distribution: Fine leaf yucca is a perennial with fleshy, long, stiff, narrow pointed leaves and a tall stalk of large white flowers growing almost directly from the fleshy roots. Leaves may extend to 20 inches above the root crown. The flowering stalk may reach 4 feet. The fruit is a large plump capsule with many medium seeds; the capsule becomes woody and splits open. So much energy goes into producing the flower, stalk and fruits that most yuccas bloom only once every few years. For fertilization of the flower, yuccas in the southwest depend upon a night visit by a tiny, highly specialized female moth that brushes the flower’s stigma with collected pollen as she enters the blossom to lay her single egg in the flower’s ovary.
Conspicuous but scattered, yucca occur in communities of blackbrush, and joint fir, shadescale and black greasewood, big sagebrush, and fourwing saltbrush, blue gamma and galleta, Colorado pinyon, and junipers, and ponderosa pine and
gambrel oak.

Elevations are from about 3,800 feet to about 7,000 feet.
Associates are green Mormon tea, sand dropseed, broom snakeweed and green rabbitbush. The sites are often slopes with coarse to medium soils.
A tall flower stalk rises from a thick clump of leaves. Height: 4' (1.2 m).Flowers 2" (5 cm), greenish white, cup-shaped, leathery, mostly
drooping, abundant; on annual stalk. Leaves 2', linear, stiff, sharp; edges white, fibrous, shreddy.

History: With an enormous variety of uses, yuccas constitute the single most important non cultivated group of plants for prehistoric and contemporary Indians living in the southwest. One of the basic requirements for a people progressing toward a more advanced society would have been the ability to tie one object to another; to do this, you usually need some kind of cordage. The long, tough fibers that could be extracted from yucca leaves played a fundamental role in early weaving, manufacturing, and construction, especially before cotton was imported from the south. Yucca fibers were twisted or braided into twine and rope that e=were used for lashing house beams, fixing ladder rungs, fashioning blankets or belts, making bowstrings, and nets for fishing or trapping small game, sewing animal-skin robes, and binding together all manner of items.

Mush more recently, in an experiment during WWII, fibers from narrow leaf yucca growing in the wild were commercially extracted and made into paper for use by the U.S. Navy.

During excavation of Aztec Ruins, aboriginal hairbrushes made from the pointed enda of yucca leaves were discovered. Strips of banana yucca leaves or whole narrow leaf varieties were employed to make paintbrushes, and to weave baskets, bags, mats, and tapestry at many Ancestral Puebloan villages. Perhaps the single most universal use was in the manufacturing sandals. The 406 sandals recovered during the 1970’s excavation of Antelope House at Canyon de Chelley showed surprising diversity in heel and toe shape, heel and toe strap design, weaving rhythm, weaving technique, and of course size. The mix included course plaited sandals made from banana yucca strips, fine plaited sandals made from narrowleaf yucca, as well as twined and wicker sandals made from yucca cordage. Some of these woven sandals employed both types of yucca, one in the warp and the other in the woof.

Although the preponderance of evidence for prehistoric use relates to manufacturing, there is plenty to indicate that yucca fruits were an item in the Ancestral Puebloan diet. This is particularly true of the thick, sweet fruit of the banana yucca, which could be eaten green. Although it was more likely dried and stored for use in winter.

Uses:
Hopi uses:
Food: The fruit of the banana yucca was dried and stored for winter use. Today they bake the fruit in earthen ovens.
Medicinal: The Hopi have used the crushed roots for a strong laxative and to cure baldness.

Navajo uses:
Ceremonial: Fiber from the narrowleaf yucca is used to tie ceremonial equipment- hoops, prayersticks, unravelers, and chant arrows. The juice is used to make paint for ceremonial pipes. Leaves of the yucca that a deer has jumped over are heated in coals. When they are soft, juice is wrung from the leaves onto small, flat stones that hold paint pigments.
Probably the most important ceremonial use of yucca is bathing in suds made from the yucca root. For example, boys and girls have their hair washed with yucca suds on the next to last night of the Nightway. Most ceremonies include a ceremonial bath of yucca suds for the patients as well as the singer, along with other cleansing rituals. Purification, clean thinking, and a serious attitude are important in Navajo ceremonies.
Navajo creation stories tell how the Navajos learned weaving from Spider Woman, a Navajo holy person. Before the 1500’s Navajos wove mats and sandals with fiber from the narrow-leaf yucca, the inner bark of the juniper and later with locally grown cotton. All this changed when the Navajo acquired sheep from the Spaniards.
Medicinal: Yucca is used in childbirth. The roots are soaked in water, the liquid is strained and given to a woman having a long labor. A cupful of yucca suds and sugar is given to the mother to help deliver the afterbirth.
Other: Yucca is used to wash wool and as an ingredient in several dyes. Soap made from the crushed root is used to wash hair. Sometimes sagebrush is added to make the hair smell good, grow long and soft, and to prevent it from falling out.
The 102 counters of the Moccasin game are often made of Yucca. An arrow poison is made with yucca juice mixed with charcoal from a
lightening struck pinyon or juniper tree and rubbed on 6 inches
of the tip of the arrow.

This yucca is often called the banana plant by Navajos
although the fruit tastes more like a date and is not considered
as good to eat as the fruit of the wide leaf yucca. However,
the fruit may be roasted in ashes, eaten raw or sliced and dried
for winter.
The crushed fruit is used to make a cheese from goat’s milk.
Other parts of the plant are edible. Flower buds are roasted in
ashes for 15 minutes, leaves are boiled with salt.
Jicarilla Apache: Use yucca suds to wash plant materials woven into baskets

Shampoo recipe: boil one-half to one cup of the chopped fresh or dried root in one and a half cups of water until suds form.

Collecting: The root at any time of the year. Should be split lengthwise, before drying. If for medicinal use, the bark may be removed; if for washing or rinsing the hair, the bark should be left on. Use only after drying.

Cultivation: From roots dug in the late fall and replanted in well-drained, sandy soil. A cinch.

Forage Value: Sheep eat yucca, especially the flower buds.

Warnings: None specifically, although strong tea, drunk in large quantities, has been used traditionally to stimulate birthing; therefore if you are pregnant, don’t drink five days worth in one sitting.

Disclaimer: Nothing herein written is to imply diagnosis or recommendation for treatment.It is presented for historical interest only

References:

Dunmire, William w., and Tierney, Gail D., Wild Plants and Native Peoples of the Four Corners, Museum of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, NM, 1997……pg 145-148

Mayes, Vernon and Lacy, Barbara Bayless, Nanise’: a Navajo Herbal, Navajo Community College Press, Tsaile, Arizona 1989….116-118

Moore, Michael, Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West, Museum of New Mexico Press, Santa Fe, NM, 2003……pg 280-282