What is "yucca baccata"

Yucca \Yuc"ca\, n. [NL., from Yuca, its name in St. Domingo.] (Bot.) A genus of American liliaceous, sometimes arborescent, plants having long, pointed, and often rigid, leaves at the top of a more or less woody stem, and bearing a large panicle of showy white blossoms.

Note: The species with more rigid leaves (as Yucca aloifolia, Yucca Treculiana, and Yucca baccata) are called Spanish bayonet, and one with softer leaves ( Yucca filamentosa) is called bear grass, and Adam's needle.

Yucca moth (Zo["o]l.), a small silvery moth ( Pronuba yuccasella) whose larv[ae] feed on plants of the genus Yucca.

Yucca baccata (datil yucca or banana yucca) is a common species of yucca native to the deserts of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico, from southeastern California north to Utah, east to western Texas and south to Sonora and Chihuahua. It is also reported in the wild in Colombia.

The species gets its common name "banana yucca" from its banana-shaped fruit. The specific epithet "baccata" means "with berries." Banana yucca is closely related to the Mojave yucca (Y. schidigera), with which it is interspersed where their ranges overlap; hybrids between them occur.

Yucca baccata is recognized by having leaves 30–100 cm long with more of a blue-green color, and short or nonexistent trunks. It flowers in the spring, starting in April to July depending on locality (altitude), and the flowers range from 5 to 13 cm long, white to cream with purple shades. The flower stalk is not especially tall, typically 1–1.5 meters. The seeds are rough, black, wingless, 3–8 mm long and wide, 1–2 mm thick; they ripen in 6–8 weeks. The indehiscent fleshy fruit is sweet, 8–18 cm long and 6 cm across, and cylindrical.

The Paiutes dried the fruits for use during the winter.