Shownotes
In 1976 Fay Ballard had just finished her first term at university and heading home for Christmas she was looking for a gift for her father who was the author J.G. Ballard. This episode is the story of that gift! It may have started as a small Yucca pot plant but almost 50 years on - it has a great story to tell.
For those of us of a certain generation, the Yucca plant will be familiar. Back in the 70's and 80's Marks and Spencer had shelves full of them. But why?
And along with the story of Fay's Yucca and the answer to the question why M&S were selling them, we have Colin Smith, who holds a National Collection of Yuccas. He knows so much about these plants and shares with us how to grow them.
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Transcripts
Welcome to our Plant stories. This is a story about a small pot plant, a Yucca that outgrew its pot.
Fay Ballard:Yes. So you can see where I pruned some of the trunks back. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7...at least there... 8, 9, 10.
So it must have had 10 when I took it from the house.
There's my father for you.
Sally Flatman:I'm sitting in Fay Ballard's garden in London on a beautiful sunny day. Fay is an artist, a botanical artist, and she is the elder daughter of the novelist J.G. ballard, which is relevant to this story.
Fay Ballard: t the University of Sussex in:And I gave him the plant for Christmas. And, you know, I didn't expect him to keep it, or I thought, you know, maybe it will die or whatever. But no, a completely different story happened.
Sally Flatman:So what year are we talking again?
Fay Ballard: So we're talking:You know, why did Marks and Spencer's think it was a good idea to sell Yuccas? And when I go to Homebase or other places, I can still see Yuccas.
So, you know, what made somebody take a commercial decision that the British public would like to buy Yuccas?
Sally Flatman:It's such a good question. I'd love to know the answer. There must have been a buyer somewhere. He saw them and saw an opportunity.
Maybe we'll have to search that one out a little more.
Fay Ballard:Yeah, I'd like to know. I think it'd be very interesting.
Sally Flatman:Stay with us because we will be answering that question.
So can you remember your dad's response to the plant?
Fay Ballard:Well, he was very loving and he brought the children up on his own. So my brother and sister and me, our mother had died when I was seven and my brother was nine and my sister was five.
Incredibly loving father, very enthusiastic. Always loved seeing us and loved everything we did, including gifts.
Sally Flatman:What made you choose that plant for him? Was there something about the Yucca that you instinctively knew he would like?
Fay Ballard: p in Shanghai. He was born in: ed the plants. And I think in: Sally Flatman:Did he have any other houseplants?
Fay Ballard:No, he had no houseplants at all.
Sally Flatman:So tell me, what happens to this houseplant?
Fay Ballard:Well, I think, you know, as a young woman, I probably didn't expect to see the plant again because, you know, my father loved writing and that's what he wanted to do and I didn't think he would want to spend much time watering a plant, let alone caring for it. You know, housework wasn't top of his agenda. You know, he was a great believer in writing. However, what happened was very interesting.
In Shepperton, there was a small garage where he'd always get his petrol and indeed where he'd always buy his cars. And he loved Ford cars because it reminded him at that time of America, large Ford cars.
So anyway, he would go off to the petrol station, get his petrol and every time he went he bought a little bottle of Baby Bio. He'd bring it back and he would then decant the whole bottle into the pot, I guess, with some water.
And he used to laugh and joke with me that this was the way of feeding and caring for the plant.
And indeed, after several years the plant got bigger and bigger and he even repotted it because every so often I'd see a much larger plastic pot and at some point it left the table in the front room where it had been and it went onto the floor in the front room next to an exercise bicycle which he'd bought and only used once. I suppose it was one day when he decided he wanted to keep fit and lose his stomach, but he only used it once. He couldn't be bothered.
Anyway, the Yucca was next to the exercise bicycle and it grew and grew and grew and every time I went home I noticed there was another shoot and each shoot was trying to find the sun.
it was growing up against the: r. And when my father died in:And when he died, I kept going. I kept going every fortnight, know collect the post, always water the Yucca.
And when the winter came, I decided to turn off the water supply because I didn't want frozen pipes. So I would always take bottles of water with me and always, always water the Yucca. And the Yucca came to represent him. It became him.
And I wanted to keep the Yucca alive because it was a way of keeping him alive. So I'd projected him into the Yucca. Yeah.
Sally Flatman:Come the point that you had to make a decision about the house and the Yucca, what did you do?
Fay Ballard:Well, I knew I wanted to save the Yucca, and I knew I was going to take it home with me, but I didn't know how. So when I was clearing the house, I thought, right, okay, got to get that Yucca somehow into my car.
Sally Flatman:Describe how big it was. Can you visually describe what it looked like if we'd walked into that room?
Fay Ballard: Okay, so you imagine a:Imagine a large plastic terracotta colored pot on the floor, very large, and the Yucca coming out of it and growing the length, well, the width of the whole room, starting at one end of the window and then pressing against the window right to the other side of the window and beyond. And I also noticed that some of the dead shoots, I suppose the discarded, well, they weren't dead shoots actually, they were probably discarded dry leaves, had poured themselves over the table that was up against the window. And this was a large, large table from Shanghai that his parents had had as a large dining table, probably seating 10 people.
So the dead leaves were pressing up against the table as well, and then had fallen like a cascade of leaves to the ground around the chairs.
So if you looked at the room, if you came into the room, the plant had dominated, completely dominated the entire side wall, exterior wall of that particular room.
And I noticed too, that towards the end of his life, my father moved his typewriter from his study, which was in the other room facing the back garden into this room that faced the road.
And I wondered, there he was with the typewriter next to the Yucca, and whether the Yucca at that point in his life was actually reminding him too, of his childhood that had been so important to him and so influential on his writing. And was the Yucca, you know, almost like, you know, some sort of manifestation of his obsessions, his memory. Yeah, his childhood passions.
It felt almost like some sort of art installation, to be honest. Some sort of jungle, interior jungle that he was inhabiting.
Sally Flatman:That's a beautiful description, can really see that in one's mind's eye. So what did you do?
Fay Ballard:So I thought, right, I'm taking it, I'm going to prune it. Now, I know nothing about gardening, even though I actually trained as a botanical artist, which I think is quite funny.
Anyway, going back to the pruning, I took a pair of secateurs down to Shepperton to the house and I decided to cut off most of the shoots because that way I could then just about get the pot and a few of the remaining shoots into the car. And I put the pot and the very heavily pruned shoots on my patio.
And at that point I had coming every fortnight, a couple of gardeners, to mow the lawn and indeed prune the shrubs in the garden. And I came out, they just left. And I came out and to my horror, the pot had vanished. I ran to their van and cried, you know I was crying at them, what have you done? Where is it? Where is it? And they looked at me as if I was a mad woman.
They opened up the boot and there was the pruned Yucca in its plastic pot, which I retrieved. I mean, they were completely bemused, I could see, you know, they thought I was just some sort of crazy, crazy, middle aged mad woman.
And I returned it to the patio and then I thought....and they said to me, that's right, they said to me, it'll never grow, it'll never grow, it's dead. You may as well accept it's dead.
And I thought, no way am I going to accept it's dead because it's my father and it's going to live. So I then started to, well I didn't know what to do with it. I started to water it a bit. I repotted it in a larger pot. I thought maybe that would help.
And then I had a new gardener, George, George Halford, who was brilliant. George said, look, we going to try and make this work. So he decided to repot it again and cut off some of the roots. He didn't give it any feed.
when he came here as a boy in:He couldn't believe the sort of dark, damp, small island he was going to have to live on. And throughout his life, I think he really remained an observer of life here, and I think his heart was still in Shanghai.
r all, if you think about it,: Sally Flatman:I think Faye's story is very beautiful. And you can see photos of the Yucca on the website ourplantstories.com along with drawings that Fay made of the Yucca in her father's house.
r selling Yucca plants in the:But first, let me introduce you to the holder of a National Collection of Yuccas, Colin Smith.
Colin Smith:I have got about 100 taxa.
Sally Flatman:Explain what that means for us.
Colin Smith:Right. Well, taxa can be different species, subspecies, hybrids, and cultivars. So it's a mixture of all of those.
Sally Flatman:Before I open up to Fay's questions, can I just ask how many plants that translates into - actual Yucca plants?
Colin Smith:I would say it's probably about 200. They're all over the place. They're in the garden. They're in the lean-to, the ones in the greenhouse I put around the garden during the summer months.
There's a couple I've got in the house permanently.
Sally Flatman:Fay, have you got some questions for Colin?
Fay Ballard: 's Brighton store in December: Colin Smith:I am, yeah, I'm guessing it was it almost certainly will be Yucca elephantipes, without a shadow of a doubt.
Now recently renamed as Yucca gigantea, mainly because they found a paper that was published about six months earlier than the one that was published saying it was Yucca elephantipes. And as taxonomists do, they keep changing the names as they find older papers mentioning things.
I'm just waiting for the time they find an older paper that mentions Yucca's under a different name. Because we'll have to change the word Yucca, won't we?
Fay Ballard:I mean, I'm very curious because I was able to buy this Yucca quite easily and if I remember rightly, there were a lot of Yuccas around that time on sale and they were being marketed, I mean, I remember in Homebase coming across them as well. And obviously M&S had lots.
But I would have thought that our climate back in the 70s wasn't so sympathetic to growing Yuccas. So I'm very interested. How were we meant to look after them?
Colin Smith:Well, I presume the one you got out of Marks and Spencer is probably actually meant to be an indoor Yucca. They will take a little bit of frost and I have planted one out because I propagated enough and I did put one out, it got clobbered, it was getting reasonably large.
I have to protect it every year in bubble wrap. But it was getting quite large and then we had a particularly nasty winter and it died right back.
But being a Yucca, it's actually coming up from the base again now and it actually looks healthier now coming up from the base than it has done for many years. But yeah, it's basically an indoor Yucca. But given its head, it's a very large yucca.
I have seen some specimens I've seen in Spain and that where the trunk base is probably a meter across, if not more, and they start to produce new branches from the base. So they do get massive.
If you walk along the Guadalquivir down in Seville, there's two massive plants there, really good quality plants down there. But then that's their climate down there, isn't it? But yeah, they'll grow freely outside.
But you've got to remember this one comes from Veracruz in Mexico. So its amazing it takes any frost at all - when you think where it's coming from and it originated.
Fay Ballard:Okay, so who's behind the export or the import whatever the word would be of Yuccas to our country? I mean who was behind it? Was it Mexico, was it another country?
Colin Smith:I'm guessing not. Well in those days Mexico may have initially, I'd imagine it was probably Holland. The Dutch as well they still are big in the horticultural industry. They sometimes they import stuff ...it's grown on in Portugal or Spain and then gets sent up to the nurseries in, in Holland and they distribute it. And I'm guessing Marks and Spencer would have got some sort of contract with, with them.
Now they are relatively easy to propagate because they produce a nice long trunk. You can just saw the trunk into 8 inch sections or 18 inch sections and then just propagate it very easily. Just stick it in the ground.
As long as conditions are warm enough, it will root. Did it ever, I might ask ask, did it ever flower?
Fay Ballard:Not that I'm aware of but my father would have loved it if it had.
Colin Smith:Yeah, I'm just saying it's probably too, it's probably too dark to stimulate it to flowers, I'm guessing. Yeah.
Fay Ballard:And what do you make of feeding it baby bio?
Colin Smith:Well, I wouldn't have done that myself. Yucca's actually. I mean all the Yuccas basically like poor soils and they're quite happy with poor soils.
So yeah, it must have thought all its Christmases arrived at once. Somebody keep tipping food on it all the time.
And yes, I mean I feed mine about once a year with a, with a slow release in the spring normally to get that, you know when they want to burst into life. But that's all I do. It thrives on neglect. The people that tend to kill them are the people that go to over water them.
Basically you should always pulse water them like you were doing. You go back once a fortnight and give it water. That's just the right thing to do. Give it a pulse of water.
There's nothing worse than it sitting in a tray of water. That's when, that's when your problems start. So yeah, your way of treating it was absolutely dead right.
Fay Ballard:God, I wouldn't have known. But there we go. That's good to, good to hear.
Sally Flatman:Colin, where did your first Yucca plant come from?
Colin Smith: at arrived in well, I suppose:That was the first, arguably the first one, in the collection.
Sally Flatman: d they sent two articles from:But there wasn't a lot about why this plant. However, they suggested I try the Marks and Spencer Facebook page, which I did.
And quite quickly, someone suggested I contact Lord Rose, who became the Chief executive and Chairman of the shop in later life. But his roots go much deeper.
Lord Rose:This goes back probably to the early 70s. I joined M & S in the early 70s, but I wasn't in horticulture probably until the end of the 70s, but I ran the department for a while.
But, you know, we had - I can remember people like my friend Martin Hudson, you know, he was the manager of the horticulture department.
And the chairman at the time was a guy called Lord Rayner, Derek Rayner. And Derek was a big plantsman. He had a big garden down in Tunbridge somewhere. And he knew a lot about plants. I knew nothing about plants.
So he always used to come in and wind me up about, about this plant or that plant with a Latin name. One of the areas where people, when they did some research and asked them what they wanted, people said, well, we would like to have, we'd like to have, you know, access to plants and whatever else. And M &S was at the forefront of bringing to the supermarkets horticulture.
But horticulture in those days was quite difficult thing to get right because it does depend on making sure that you keep the product at a constant temperature, to make sure you get life out of it and make sure that when it gets to your house, it doesn't wilt within five minutes.
And one of the first places, that one of the easiest things to do was to get into green plants before and to potted plants, before we went into fresh flowers, because fresh flowers was a much more difficult thing to handle. They're much more sensitive. So it then became apparent that Holland was the place where it was all happening.
And the Dutch were very good at propagating this stuff and they particularly propagated a plant called the Yucca plant. And mostly because it was green, small, hardy and indestructible.
I mean, you really couldn't, if you didn't water it for a month or two, it really didn't matter...certainly if you didn't water it.
And, you know, people wanted to sort of buy a Yucca plant, put it onto their little shelf in their front room with the net curtains behind it and they had a bit of green in the house and it didn't require too much and they sold like hot cakes. It was just one of those things that sort of, it became a sort of must have item. You've got a Yucca plant. I must have a Yucca plant.
Oh, where did you get that Yucca plant? I bought it at Marks and Spencer and we controlled the market pretty well because everybody else was dealing with it on a small time basis.
And we were the first ones, if you like to sort of commoditise it, industrialise it and start selling large volumes, which meant two things.
One is you could get a consistent size plan plant, secondly, you could reduce the price and thirdly, you could therefore increase the volume that you sold. So it was a win win situation.
And from there, I mean the Yucca plant is iconic and I think this was a time of great change and people want change and they want newness and they want innovation, they want excitement. And the innovative thing at the time was the Yucca plant. But really that was the genesis of horticulture in the house, supermarkets moving into that space.
And now if you look at the total sales of fresh flowers in the UK plants in the UK even if you think, even I think if you take into account garden centres, the supermarkets between them have a massive market share on fresh flowers and plants because they do it so well.
Sally Flatman:I suspect now when I drive around London I can see some enormous Yucca plants in front gardens.
Lord Rose:I'm sure they got moved from the house into the garden. Yeah, but you can't kill them. They're probably going to be a turn out to be a pest at some point in time, Sally, frankly, they're hideous.
Sally Flatman:Do you not like them?
Lord Rose:Well, I personally don't like one. I haven't got one anywhere near my garden. I haven't seen a Yucca plant in a pot in a home, I must say for some time.
But I'm sure if I went to some leafy suburb somewhere then I could find some elderly lady or gentleman who's probably still got one somewhere. I don't know if you can still buy them.
I mean I haven't actually, I haven't actually looked but I don't know if you still, if you go, I must go into M & S or Tesco's or Sainsbury's and see if they're actually still selling them. I think if I went to my florist and said can I have a Yucca Plant, they'd look at me a bit sideways.
Sally Flatman:There could be a revival. We could. We could start it.
Lord Rose:You're the lady, you're the girl to do it. Get to start the Yucca Revival Society.
Sally Flatman:So Lord Rose may not be a fan, but what does Colin love about Yuccas?
Colin Smith:It's the flowers, I think is really the spectacular thing. I mean, some elephantipes or gigantea actually, for the size of the plant, they mainly produce a panicle of flowers, well on that one, if you get a panicle, it will probably be at best about 8 inches. So it barely gets out of the leaves. Some of the more spectacular ones, you're looking at 2, 3 meters.
And so, yeah, there's some really, really spectacular flowering ones out there.
Sally Flatman:That does beg the question. And we will obviously do a how to grow at the end although I think we have we're answering many of these questions. But how do you get it to flower?
Colin Smith:It's good light seems to be the main thing. I mean, I've got one. But they don't all flower.
There are some species that will flower reliably and regularly.
Probably the best one, the one I always recommend, if you had no other yucca, is one called recurvifolia, although it seems to have slightly disappeared at the moment from the nurseries and the horticultural industry.
It's probably because it is the most basic, but it is such an easy one to grow and once it's big enough, it will flower for you every year without fail, and you'll get the panicle on that is usually between 1 and 2 meters.
Sally Flatman:So if we came to your house, would, you know, would we see Yuccas in flower all over the place?
Colin Smith:You would in the summer months. Yeah. Yeah, you would. I've got one flowering at the moment, but I've got several more that are in the process of flowering.
I always reckon probably the beginning of July is peak flowering season.
Sally Flatman:So how could Fay get hers to bloom?
Colin Smith:That one is actually quite reluctant to bloom in Britain. I only have heard you have to take it somewhere.
Move it to Spain and it might be more amenable to bloom.
Fay Ballard:Yes, well, it's quite poignant actually, Colin, because my mother died in Spain.
Colin Smith:Oh, sorry to hear.
Fay Ballard:No, no, no. It's just life, you know, when I was young and she was young. So I like the fact that there's a connection to Spain.
It's rather poetic for me actually.
Colin Smith:But yes, I've seen them flower in Spain and I've seen them flowering in the south of France. I have never seen one flowering in Britain but I did hear there was one in a foyer somewhere of a hotel in London that had flowered.
That's the only one I've heard of in Britain that's flowered. I don't know what it is about, it's probably a light thing.
Sally Flatman:Will you share some photographs with us Colin, so we can share those on the website? Because I just think many of us have just never seen a Yucca plant in flower.
We're growing the wrong one one Fay we need to grow different plants really?
Fay Ballard:Yes, I mean Colin, can you describe for listeners what the flower looks like, what color it is, what shape it is?
Colin Smith:Well actually the flower kind of slightly changes during the day and night.
Yuccas are predominantly pollinated by night flying moths so they tend to open up at night and be a bell shaped and then a lot of them then just close up during the day.
Fay Ballard:And are they a bright colour?
Colin Smith:The colours are predominantly white.
There's some hints of green, there's some with hints of purple reds but they're predominantly white because they're white flowering because they're attracting moths at night. The story with the Yuccas and their pollination is actually very interesting.
They have evolved or co-evolved with a particular group of moths which exclusively pollinate them so they don't produce nectar. All they'll do is attract the moths and the moths gather a ball of pollen and then they stuff it down the stigmatic chamber which is at the top of the flower and then while they're doing that they also lay a few eggs around the base. So the larvae then burrow in and they eat some of the seeds and then obviously there is enough seeds then to be dispersed.
So it's an exclusive deal they've got going between them. It's actually originally there were about four moths described doing this but it's now beginning to look much more complicated than this.
I think they've recorded now about 16 different species doing this.
There's also now they've discovered a group of moths who are false Yucca moths in as much as they still lay their eggs and burrow into the ovary and eat the eggs but they don't actually pollinate it, so they're freeloaders. So the biology's got more and more complicated.
Sally Flatman:And if you take a plant like a Yucca which is not a native plant to the UK and you grow it.
This might be a daft question, but how come there are still moths that are attracted to that Yucca, even though this is not a native plant to this country at all, it still finds a moth that will.
Colin Smith:No, unfortunately not. That species does not exist in the uk.
I have a feeling they might have accidentally introduced it to Spain mainly because I've seen Yucca pods on Yuccas in Spain in sufficient numbers to make me a bit suspicious that they not only brought the compost in because the moth overwinters in the compost at the base of the plant.
So I am guessing that they brought in a few plants despite EU rules about bare rooted plants and all that they bought in stuff in pots which has had a few Yucca moths in the compost.
Sally Flatman:So you don't see pods because we don't have.
Colin Smith:You normally don't see.
Sally Flatman:Your Yuccas won't be pollinated.
Colin Smith:Exactly. In the UK you will not see pods. On saying that I have occasionally found the odd plant that has got a pod on it which it's usually in a situation where there's a very congested head of several flower spikes together and I'm guessing the wind has just coincidentally knocked them about enough and somehow a bit of pollen's actually managed to get into the stigmatic chamber. But I've only seen that about three times in 30 years. So it is pretty unusual.
Sally Flatman:I feel we should do a how to grow and I know we've touched on some of these things but I mean if someone was starting out but they haven't got any house plants or they don't have a Yucca plant, Colin, where would you start?
Would you be down at B & Q or M & S getting one of the ones like Fay has or would you seek it slightly differently?
Colin Smith:No, that's fine. The wonderful thing about Yucca gigantea is its so amenable to live in a pot
And I mean I've had one in the same, it's been lived in the same pot now for 20 odd years. I've never repotted it.
Because as elephantipes the type's old name suggests it's like an elephant's foot the way it spreads out. There's only a little rim around the edge of the pot now which hasn't actually got trunk on it. I can't think of any other, there's very few plants that would actually tolerate living like that. But it's still going strong. But saying that not all Yucca species are that amenable to living in a pot.
If you try to put say the Joshua tree in a pot, two years if you're lucky because it goes down looking for water, goes round and around the base of the pot until you over water it then it rots and the rock goes right up through the plant and kills it.
Sally Flatman:So position. Where should you put it once you've got your Yucca?
Colin Smith:I would always put them in a sunny position. They like good light at the end of the day and they'll grow better in good light. They will tolerate shade...
Sally Flatman:So south facing windows.
Colin Smith:Yeah, south facing window. Just be wary putting things too close to a south facing window because right against the glass you can get scorch. So yeah.
Especially if the leaf is actually leaning on the window. You get bright sunshine on that and it'll scorch it.
Sally Flatman:And how often do we water?
Colin Smith:Depends on the time of year. This time of year I'm probably doing it once a week.
Sally Flatman:And if you wanted to find something a little bit more unusual, not that we're saying the Marks & Spencer one is not a good one to have, but if you wanted to get an unusual one or if Fay is starting to build a collection, you know.
Colin Smith:Things get out of control. I do appreciate that.
Sally Flatman:What could she look for and where would she find it?
Colin Smith:Well, if you live in London, I think there's the Palm Centre. If I'm allowed to advertise for the Palm Centre, they usually have a few. There's a place called Plantbase down on the Kent Sussex border. They usually have few and Architectural Plants I don't think their collection is as big as it was and I've recently actually acquired a couple of new specimens to replace up in Norwich.
Sally Flatman:We can put all the links on on the website.
Sally Flatman:What one would you look for? Can you give us a couple of names?
Colin Smith:What plants you mean? Depends how challenging you want it. That is the question. I've got the two new ones I've acquired.
One is called rigida which I think will be interesting. I can keep it theoretically, as long as you don't get a stupid winter. It should survive in a very sheltered position in the garden.
But one I would look out for. And it's a lovely plant and it's perfectly hardy is one called rostrata. If you want something a bit unusual, get a rostrata.
They just have a single trunk, nice glaucous green leaves. The only downside of them, when you're weeding, be wary of the leaves don't just have a spine on the end of it, but they have teeth on the edge of the leaf as well. So you have to put your hand right in underneath, lift them up out of the way and then weed underneath.
Don't just dive in, otherwise you're going to lacerate your hands. But they're a lovely plant and I've. Yeah, I've got three in the garden and one in a pot.
Sally Flatman:And in winter, will they survive outside or will you have to...
Colin Smith:Yeah, those. The rostrata live outside. Totally unprotected. Yeah, totally unprotected.
Sally Flatman:So, Fay, are you going to increase your collection or are you going to stick?
Fay Ballard:Certainly making copious notes on all of that. Yeah, I'm going to look at the websites, actually. Yes, why not?
Colin Smith:Yeah, yeah. So the one in Norwich is called Urban Jungle.
Sally Flatman:Yeah. I think we need a little bit more variety, don't we? I mean, I get that, you know, you can produce masses of the one that we all possibly have, but I feel like there's a little more.... more, you know, more adventurous. We could. We could find different ones.
Colin Smith:Yeah, absolutely.
Fay Ballard:What is the typical lifespan of a Yucca? I mean, can you can. Can you generalise?
Colin Smith:It's a problematic thing for a national collection holder because quite a few of them can probably live for several hundred years, and most of my collection, if they're left alone, will outlive me by a long way. So, like the Joshua tree. Well, I had a Joshua tree. It got up to over 2 meters too.
Unfortunately, it got too big for the greenhouse and it got frosted and I lost it. But when you go to, you know, California, there's Joshua trees 30 or 40ft high, and they're clearly hundreds of years old.
Fay Ballard:I'm very happy about that because that means that my one can be handed down to my children.
Colin Smith:Oh, absolutely, yeah.
Fay Ballard:If they want to look after it, yeah. They can hand it possibly down to theirs.
Colin Smith:Yeah, absolutely.
Fay Ballard:If they have children. So that is wonderful.
Colin Smith:But what you can also do is propagate from it and then every every grandchild and every great grandchild can have their own plant. So yeah, when you've got a spare shoot, chop it off.
Do it in the summer months when it's warm, and then just keep it warm, in gritty compost. And when it roots and ready to go, hand it on.
Fay Ballard:Wonderful.
Colin Smith:So every member of your family can have that piece of that Yucca.
Fay Ballard:Yeah, exactly. I love it.
Sally Flatman: f those other Yuccas from the:Our Plant Stories is an independent podcast, researched, produced and presented by me, Sally Flatman.
And if you have enjoyed this episode, I'd really appreciate it if you could take a moment to rate and review it as that means more people may find the podcast.
