Yucca flaccidaHaw.

Adam's needleSpanish bayonetWeak-leaf yuccaweak-leaf yucca

WFO wfo-0000752230 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Yucca flaccida, photographed by Reid Hardin
fig. a Reid Hardin, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-05-01 / obs. 194552212

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.

Native range 21 botanical countries

Regions where Yucca flaccida is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Ontario, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin AlabamaArkansasFloridaGeorgiaIllinoisIndianaKansasLouisianaMarylandMichiganMississippiMissouriNorth CarolinaOhioOklahomaOntarioPennsylvaniaSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasWisconsin
Native distribution of Yucca flaccida, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Kansas KAN
Louisiana LOU
Maryland MRY
Michigan MIC
Mississippi MSI
Missouri MSO
North Carolina NCA
Ohio OHI
Oklahoma OKL
Ontario ONT
Pennsylvania PEN
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Wisconsin WIS

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 34 in flower of 72 examined

Proportion of examined Yucca flaccida in flower, by month
Month In flower Examined Share 95% interval
Jan 0 2 too few examined
Feb 0 3 too few examined
Mar 0 3 too few examined
Apr 2 9 22% 6% to 55%
May 15 18 83% 61% to 94%
Jun 12 17 71% 47% to 87%
Jul 4 6 67% 30% to 90%
Aug 0 4 too few examined
Sep 1 4 too few examined
Oct 0 2 too few examined
Nov 0 3 too few examined
Dec 0 1 too few examined

Peak flowering in May. Each bar is the share of Yucca flaccida observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 34 of 72 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 8 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 35 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.

  • Yucca arkansana subsp. freemanii (Shinners) Hochstätter
  • Yucca arkansana subsp. louisianensis (Trel.) Hochstätter
  • Yucca concava Haw.
  • Yucca exigua Baker
  • Yucca filamentosa f. concava (Haw.) Voss
  • Yucca filamentosa f. flaccida (Haw.) Voss
  • Yucca filamentosa f. glaucescens (Haw.) Voss
  • Yucca filamentosa f. orchioides (Carrière) Voss
  • Yucca filamentosa f. puberula (Haw.) Voss
  • Yucca filamentosa subsp. concava (Haw.) Hochstätter
  • Yucca filamentosa subsp. smalliana (Fernald) Hochstätter
  • Yucca filamentosa var. concava (Haw.) Baker
  • Yucca filamentosa var. flaccida (Haw.) Engelm.
  • Yucca filamentosa var. glaucescens (Haw.) Baker
  • Yucca filamentosa var. grandiflora Baker
  • Yucca filamentosa var. orchioides (Carrière) Baker
  • Yucca filamentosa var. puberula (Haw.) Baker
  • Yucca filamentosa var. smalliana (Fernald) H.E.Ahles
  • Yucca flaccida f. exigua (Baker) Trel.
  • Yucca flaccida f. orchioides (Carrière) Trel.
  • Yucca flaccida var. exigua (Baker) Trel.
  • Yucca flaccida var. glaucescens (Haw.) Trel.
  • Yucca flaccida var. grandiflora (Baker) Trel.
  • Yucca flaccida var. integra Trel.

and 11 more.

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.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

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