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 Succulents	Dasylirion texanum- Texas Sotol/	Dasylirion wheeleri - Desert Spoon/
Wildflower.org	Dasylirion texanum	Dasylirion wheeleri
Texas A & M	Texas Sotol, Green Sotol	Desert Spoon, Desert Sotol, Wheeler Sotol, Grey Sotol
Wikipedia	Dasylirion texanum	Dasylirion wheeleri
Flickr (images)	dasylirion texanum	dasylirion wheeleri
Plant Delights Nursery (images)	Dasylirion texanum coll. #A1T-028 Texas Sotol	Dasylirion wheeleri 'Apache Junction'

Emphasis on Dasylirion Texanum

• "Dasylirion Texanum - Texas Sotol"
• "TEXAS SOTOL"

Emphasis on Dasylirion wheeleri

• "Great Design Plant: Dasylirion Wheeleri"
• "Vascular Plants of the Gila Wilderness-- Dasylirion wheeleri"
• "Common Sotol: Dasylirion wheeleri"
• "Dasylirion wheeleri"
• "Dasylirion wheeleri Common Sotol"
• "Dasylirion Wheeleri Care: Growing Common Sotol"
• http://www.public.asu.edu/~camartin/plants/Plant%20html%20files/dasylirionwheeleri.html

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.