Yucca brevifoliaEngelm.

Western Joshua Tree

WFO wfo-0000752275 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Yucca brevifolia, photographed by Adam J. Searcy
fig. a Adam J. Searcy, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-28 / obs. 201744648
Yucca brevifolia, photographed by Kyle Nessen
fig. b Kyle Nessen, CC0 1.0 / obs. 190784760
Yucca brevifolia, photographed by Kimball Garrett
fig. c Kimball Garrett, CC0 1.0 / obs. 191923939
Yucca brevifolia, photographed by DiegoH
fig. d DiegoH, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 201066256
Yucca brevifolia, photographed by laiet17
fig. e laiet17, CC0 1.0 / obs. 186189136
Yucca brevifolia, photographed by Leah Gardner
fig. f Leah Gardner, CC0 1.0 / obs. 186120533
Yucca brevifolia, photographed by Leah Gardner
fig. g Leah Gardner, CC0 1.0 / obs. 186117246
Yucca brevifolia, photographed by Ellen C Lovelidge
fig. h Ellen C Lovelidge, CC0 1.0 / obs. 186826600

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 2,192 observations

Peak flowering in Mar, from 2,192 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 13 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Cleistoyucca arborescens (Torr.) Eastw.
  • Clistoyucca arborescens (Torr.) Trel.
  • Clistoyucca brevifolia (Engelm.) Rydb.
  • Sarcoyucca brevifolia (Engelm.) Linding.
  • Yucca arborescens (Torr.) Trel.
  • Yucca brevifolia f. herbertii J.M.Webber
  • Yucca brevifolia subsp. herbertii (J.M.Webber) Hochstätter
  • Yucca brevifolia subsp. jaegeriana (McKelvey) Hochstätter
  • Yucca brevifolia var. brevifolia
  • Yucca brevifolia var. herbertii (J.M.Webber) Munz
  • Yucca brevifolia var. jaegeriana McKelvey
  • Yucca draconis var. arborescens Torr.
  • Yucca jaegeriana (McKelvey) L.W.Lenz

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.