Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard' (Adam's Needle)

Also called Adam's needle, or simply 'Color Guard' yucca, Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard' is a dry-loving, evergreen perennial cultivar that represents the halfway point between a shrub and a cacti. Closely resembling plants like agave, yucca is actually native to a large swathe of the eastern half of the United States, and can grow anywhere with full sun and relatively dry, well-draining soil. The 'Color Guard' cultivar is noted for its highly attractive variegated foliage, which is bright green on the outside of its spiky fronds, and buttery yellow on the inside.

Individual leaves are covered in small spikes and fine hairs, making it resistant to deer and rabbit damage, and since it's evergreen, as long as it's kept healthy, your Yucca filamentosa 'Color Guard' will look just as good in gold and green in December as it does in August and, in fact, may take on even more interest in winter when it develops light pink hues to boot! although clumping leaves typically grow to only about 2-3' tall, Adam's needle produces an upright flower spike around mid summer with drooping, bell-shaped white flowers that brings the plant's total height to around 4-6' tall! Yucca is an excellent pick for a variety of gardens for its ornamental value and its hardiness, tolerating drought, heat, poor soil, animal damage, and even salt.

On an interesting note, Yucca filamentosa has a unique pollination relationship with a group of moths called yucca pollen moths; without the plants, the moths would die out, and without the moths, the plants would die out!