YUCCA 
Yucca baileyi Wooton and Standley 
The genus Yucca belongs to the Lily Family and contains many 
species native in North and Central America. The roots, when rubbed 
in water, give a thick suds, and they are often used as a substitute for 
soap in washing clothes, especially by the native people of the South- 
west. The Amole, as the root is called by the Mexicans, is very effi- 
cacious in cleaning fabrics, or when used in bathing or as a shampoo, 
leaving the skin smooth and the hair soft and glossy. The names soap- 
root and Spanish dagger or Spanish bayonet are applied to the yuc- 
cas in the United States. 
When driving in June from Gallup, New Mexico, to Zum, I found 
this beautiful yucca coming into bloom in many places along the edge 
of the spatse pinyon or nut pine forests. The sturdy spikes of large, 
pale green flowers, tinged on the sepals with purple, grew from two 
to three feet in height. They rose from a bristling clump of relatively 
short, nattow, sharp-pointed green leaves, furnished along their bor- 
ders with stiff, coarse, threadlike fibers. 
This yucca, which was named for Vernon Bailey, of the U.S. Bio- 
logical Survey, has a narrow range in northwestern New Mexico and 
northeastern Arizona. 
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