[Illustration: FINE-LEAVED TREE-YUCCA SOAPWEED]
Beargrass. Fine-Leaved Tree-Yucca (_Yucca elata_) belongs to a group widely represented in Texas by many different forms, those with thin thready leaves being known as beargrass, soapweed, “palmillo,” and Adam’s needle and those with thick, stiff, sharp-pointed leaves as Spanish bayonet or dagger. All have creamy or greenish-white bell-shaped drooping flowers borne in dense clusters on a long stalk growing out of a rosette of leaves. The fine-leaved tree-yucca sometimes grows 20 ft. high and is very abundant west of the Pecos River to Arizona. The budding flower stalk is quite tender and palatable and was often used as a food by early settlers. It is an excellent food for cattle, and they keep the stalks stripped of budding shoots, making the absence of seed pods quite conspicuous on the cattle ranges. Indians used the leaf fibers for making sandals.
Soapweed (_Yucca glauca_), the common yucca of the Panhandle of Texas and adjacent states, has an unbranched flower stalk. As in other yuccas, the roots yield soap when the bark is removed and crushed in water. The fruits of the stiff-leaved tree-yuccas are edible.
[Illustration: SMALL RAIN LILY GIANT RAIN LILY]
Plants with bulbs or fibrous roots; leaves basal; sepals 3, petal-like; petals 3, sepals and petals united into a tube below; stamens 6; ovary inferior, 3-celled.
Small or Drummond’s Rain Lily (_Cooperia drummondii_) is known in cultivation as evening star. It does not have a stalked seed pod like the giant rain lily and has smaller flowers with much longer tube and shorter and narrower leaves. It blooms in the late summer and fall.
The cooperias were named in honor of Joseph Cooper, an English gardener. Drummond’s rain lily honors Thomas Drummond, a Scottish plant collector who visited the southeastern part of Texas in 1833-34.
Giant Rain Lily (_Cooperia pedunculata_) has lovely fragrant white flowers which last only a day or two. The tubular flowers appear funnel-shaped for some hours after opening, but the six broad lobes spread widely as the flowers mature. The leaves are all basal and grow from a large black-coated bulb; they are about a foot long and nearly half an inch wide. Shortly after heavy rains in spring and early summer, lawns, meadows, and woods in Louisiana, Texas, and Mexico are covered with the lovely blossoms. It is also called prairie lily, field lily, crow poison, and fairy lily.