Tuesday, June 23, 2020

Pretty Tall Sotols, Part 1

Love that YouTube suggested the thumbnail with bees and yellowy, clustered cheeto-shaped blooms.


How tall are sotols? They're distinctly tall. Ones that I've seen tend to be at least as tall as street lights. And they're pretty, especially with flower/flowery stalks/spikes!

Sotols have relatives that confuse the casual observers. Before I dug into sotols, I'd blogged about a yucca that some friends had suggested was a sotol. The leaves that radiate from base areas for both kinds of plants look similar. Overview websites provide introductions to sotols and similar plants, the first two also advocating sotols in xeriscaping.
Dasylirion texanum and Dasylirion wheeleri Habitat and Overall Contrast

In researching sotols, I kept encountering the scientific names Dasylirion texanum and Dasylirion wheeleri. My initial information about habitat and leaf features come from Monrovia, a plant seller.

"Texas Sotol Dasylirion texanum" states "Native to Texas Hill Country. ... Stiff, spiny, sharp-edged green leaves, to 23 [sic] feet long and 1 inches wide".

Note: After having poked around numerous sites, I'd concluded the text should have said "2-3 feet".

"Silver Desert Spoon Dasylirion wheeleri" states "Native to West Texas, Arizona, and northern Mexico. ... Spiky, fairly stiff, bluish gray leaves to 3 feet long and less than 1 inches wide".

I'm guessing these neighborhood specimens I've found are texanum because they're native to Hill Country, whereas the wheeleri WRT Texas is West Texas. Maybe if the specimens were bought and transplanted plants, they likely came from from plant sellers. Texanums would likely be cheaper and less effort to transport to Central Texas than wheeleris.

Anyway, the two Monrovia pages include images in leaf and leafhead contrasts. (I'm using "leafhead" to mean the part of the plant where the leaves grow from. The actual technical term is caudex.) Texanums' leafhead centers seem to grow from ground level, and wheeleris' leafhead centers look to radiate leaves in a spherical shape above the ground. Tiling the images side by side, the color difference stands out.

Succinct leaf descriptions come from Southern Living's "sotol": "Slender, green leaves with spiny margins form a symmetrical, rounded rosette" (Dasylirion texanum) and "Twisting, curling, ribbon-like, blue-green foliage" (Dasylirion wheeleri).

Plant Lust's "Dasylirion wheeleri" describes the twist with visuals—"the end of each leaf forms a little cowlick curl...like Elvis used to have .... If you are having trouble imagining this, think of a giant, blue-braided Afro."

More About Dasylirion texanum and Dasylirion wheeleri Foliage

From "The Genus Dasylirion Family Asparagaceae (formerly Agavaceae)":
The arching leaves (of Dasylirion texanum) may grow to four feet long. They are green to grayish green, slender and flexible with teeth along the margins. The unbranched flower spike can be fifteen feet tall. The top two to three feet of the spike is densely covered by small creamy white to yellow flowers.

Slender, three foot long, spiny, blue-gray leaves (of Dasylirion wheeleri) form a dense rosette at the top of the stem. Slender flower stalks of white flowers can grow to ten feet long or more.
A Dasylirion wheeleri characteristic that Dasylirion texanum doesn't have: "Desert Spoon, Desert Sotol, Wheeler Sotol, Grey Sotol" states "The (Dasylirion wheeleri) leaves ... are spoon-like at the base, giving the genus the common name of "desert spoon". "Dasylirion wheeleri - Spoon Yucca" succinctly describes wheeleri leaves and spoon association: "The 3 foot long narrow leaves are blue-gray color with sharp serrated margins and a spoon shaped base that gives the plant one of its common name."

From "Introduction to Dasylirions (Sotols)":
It (Dasylirion wheeleri) is immediately recognizable by its pale blue, usually somewhat twisted, flat, heavily armed, very stiff and narrow 3'-4' leaves that end in a brownish tassel. It is called a desert spoon because if the leaf if removed in its entirety the base of the leaf is spoon-shaped where it was attached to the caudex/stem. The leaves come off the caudex in a strikingly symmetrical pattern forming a perfect sphere of viciously sharp but ornamental leaves.

This species (Dasylirion texanum) is not unlike Dasylirion wheeleri but distinctly a pale green color and the leaves are not twisted. Otherwise it is a very similar plant in both shape and size, and nearly as cold tolerant. Some populations, particularly in the very dry areas, are significantly smaller than most other Dasylirions having leaves only up to 2.5'-3' long.
Specimens in My Video that I'm Mostly Certain of Species

The sotol pix and videos I recorded were in late spring and early summer of 2018, 2019, and 2020.

A, newly planted plant starting to bloom
B, two sets of bloomed plants at a business
C, plant and more recently spotted plant with heavily bloomed stalk
D, plants with focus on bloomed stalks, some sagging, loads of bees
E, plant with heavily bloomed stalk
Leafheads and closer-in looks of leaves for C, D, and E, followed by one compilation image.

A and B leafhead grouping images indicate Dasylirion texanum because of the leaves radiating from the ground. C's leafheads look spiky (sunburst-like) with mild leaf twistiness, seemingly more wheeleri than texanum. (My two-year old composite shows "Texas", but I'm not totally convinced for either texanum or wheeleri.) D's leaves seem to radiate from the ground (texanum characteristic), although the color doesn't seem bright green, like E.

My sotol content became so laden that I broke it up into two sections. Think of record side A (hit side) and side B (flip side). My flip side article "Pretty Tall Sotols, Part 2" includes info with less emphasis on physical characteristics, and additional links tor deeper digging.

Pretty Tall Sotols, Part 2

"Pretty Tall Sotols, Part 1" emphasizes mostly the plants' physical characteristics. (Video: "Pretty Tall Sotols") This article includes secondary info: sotol as alcohol and resemblance to yucca. On the periphery of sotols, having viewed numerous videos with bees around blooms, I wondered long bees live. The final section includes additional resources.

Sotol, the Alcohol

People use agave plants to produce tequila. Sotol alcohol comes from sotol plants. "You’ve Probably Never Heard of Sotol, the Craft Cocktail World’s Best Kept Secret" describes the product and process that an Austin company uses.
Sotol is made from the desert plants Dasylirion wheeleri and Dasylirion texanum (known as sotol in Spanish), which are harvested in the wild. ... This liquor is most closely associated with the Mexican states Chihuahua, Durango and Coahuil, although there are now distillers in Texas producing sotol.

Only around one liter can be extracted from a single plant compared to the six liters extracted from a single plant during the tequila making process. Furthermore, sotol distillation takes place in a column still instead of a pot.
Sotol and Elata Yucca Resemblance

About two years ago, I wrote "Spiky-head, Multi-branch, Blooming Yucca (Elata/Soaptree)". Sending an image out, I'd asked for help IDing it. Some people IDed it as a yucca, and some guessed sotol. Note the spiky leafhead in the articles image that resembles images of sotols leafheads. Yuccas' bloomy stalks have bell-shaped flowers. Sotols' bloomy stalks have yellowy, clustered cheeto-shaped blooms.

A Bee Thought in My Bonnet

Some of my video clips showed blooming sotol stalks with loads of hovering bees. The footage was from June of 2019; I wondered how long bees live. "What Is the Life Span of a Honey Bee?" provides the following longevity info:
Drone bees (male bees hatched from unfertilized eggs) live for around eight weeks. Sterile worker bees tend to live for up to six weeks during summer and five months or more during winter. However, the queen bee, the only fertile bee in the colony, can live for several years.
Sites that Display Pages for Both Dasylirion Texanum and Dasylirion Wheeleri

Several of the resources have separate pages for Dasylirion texanum and Dasylirion wheeleri. Descriptions range from similar style and content publishing to left-hand-doesn't-know-what-the-right-hand-is-doing published content.

Mortellaros' two pages have nearly identical between the species, as though one person used one paragraph and tweaked a copied paragraph into the other page. Thankfully, they use different pictures. Also they do differentiate between texanum and wheeleri blooms and flower gender.

Texanum ("Yucca, Sotol Dasylirion texanum"): "Numerous small greenish-white flowers .... The Sotol Yucca is dioecious, meaning the flowers are either male or female on the single plant."

Wheeleri ("Yucca, Blue Sotol Dasylirion wheeleri"): "Numerous small white flowers .... The Blue Sotol Yucca is dioecious, meaning the flowers are either male or female on the single plant."

Additional Dasylirion texanum and Dasylirion wheeleri by same-resource sites:

>Resource
Resource texanum wheeleri
World of SucculentsDasylirion texanum- Texas Sotol/Dasylirion wheeleri - Desert Spoon/
Wildflower.orgDasylirion texanumDasylirion wheeleri
Texas A & MTexas Sotol, Green SotolDesert Spoon, Desert Sotol, Wheeler Sotol, Grey Sotol
WikipediaDasylirion texanumDasylirion wheeleri
Flickr (images)dasylirion texanumdasylirion wheeleri
Plant Delights Nursery (images)Dasylirion texanum coll. #A1T-028 Texas SotolDasylirion wheeleri 'Apache Junction'

Emphasis on Dasylirion Texanum
Emphasis on Dasylirion wheeleri
Entertaining and Informative YouTube Videos
  • "Texas Sotol Flower Spike Timelapse"
    Time lapse shows night-vision views; bees buzz around 1:37 mark.
  • "Sotol and bees"
    Sign says wheeleri. See spiky leaves, bees around 30-second mark.
  • "Sotol (Desert Spoon)"
    Good views of leaves are at 3:02 mark—grayish green, spines 90 degrees from leaf axis. About 6 minutes in, shows a good cross-section of the leafhead and "spoons" at base end of leaves.

Pretty Tall Sotols

The content is in two articles.

"Pretty Tall Sotols, Part 1"
Emphasis mostly on the plants' physical characteristics.

"Pretty Tall Sotols, Part 2"
Sotol as alcohol, resemblance to yucca, bees buzzing blooms piquing curiosity about bees' longevity, additional resources.