Kitchen Garden Forum

Imagine my surprise when I went over to a friends and saw this in their garden. It’s only every been a foliage plant but this appeared quite quickly. No real smell to the flowers but they’re big, around a couple of inches in diameter. Looks gorgeous but it’s getting cold up here so they probably wont’ last.

Do we cut the middle stem out? Just leave it to die back? Will this weaken the plant and it’ll need some tlc i.e. wrapping in fleece over the winter? So many questions.

It’s a Yucca Myrkk. Also can be a houseplant, but can survive outdoors. Mine flowered every years for a few years, but it got too big and I had to remove it.

Many Yucca are monocarpic, flower and die, but some sort of offset so only the part that flowered dies.

Am glad to be educated as I thought it was some kind of giant jumbo Lilly of the Valley !! Rather splendid though but I imagine also rather difficult to prune back and get under control once it starts outgrowing its planned living space.

But I'm always a little wary of those spikey leaved plants. They can be an eye accident waiting to happen if you accidently trip and end up with a nasty spear in your eye! As you start getting older all kinds of extra hazards suddenly start appearing on your horizon !

Thanks for that. I didn’t realise you could grow yucca outdoors (especially in Scotland). I’ll pass the details on to my friend, she was very surprised to see the flowers too as it’s been in the garden for quite a number of years, obviously it’s aged just enough and the weather was just right this year. Will be interesting to see if it does it next year too.