THE YUCCAS— AS HARDY ORNAMENTAL PLANTS. 



plants. Yucca flaccida, angustifoUa a,niJila'inentosa, bear a temperature of 10° or 15° 

 below zero of Fahrenheit, and Y. gloriosa 6° degrees below, without being at all injured. 



As they grow with great facility in any rich, light soil, and are easily propagated by 

 division of the roots, there is no reason why they should not be cultivated in every flower 

 garden. April, and the first half of May, are the best season for transplanting the roots. 



The Yuccas belong to the lilly tribe, in the natural system of botany, and the tall stem, 

 (branched like a tapering pyramid,) of superb lilly-like flowers, of a creamy white color, 

 that each plant throws up in mid-summer, forms one of the most remarkable embellish- 

 ments of the flower garden or shrubbery. But a great merit of the Yuccas, over most 

 herbaceous plants, is the constant beauty of the foliage, in fact of the whole plant, all the 

 year round. The general appearance of the plant is not unlike that of the Agaves, or 

 Century Aloes, (to which they are allied,) only the leaves are narrower — being only an inch 

 or two broad. These leaves retain their deep green verdure summer and winter, and being 

 systematically arranged on the plant, and handsome in themselves, they are as strikingly 

 ornamental among the snows of winter, as in mid-summer. A winter garden, such as we 

 have several times alluded to in these pages, would, beside evergreen trees, be mostappro- 

 priatelyplanted into beds or groups of Yuccas, to cheat the season out of its dreariness. 

 We shall notice a few of the sorts most easily obtained at the nurseries, and most suitable 

 for the gardens of the northern states. 



THE Adam's needle, or ytjcca gloriosa. 

 I. Yucca gloriosa, or Adam's Needle. — This is the largest and most striking 

 hardy Yuccas. It is, in fact, an evergreen shrub, growing two to five feet high, wi 



