They are one of my favorite yuccas! I have a small one I planted last summer. They live longer then 5 years, longer then 20 years? I never heard of them as being a short lived yucca? They must have a long life to reach the size the do? I have seen some here in Idaho that a 4-6 ft. tall.
I like thier soft tropical leaves. and their bent trunks they grow! This is the tropical looking yuccas you see on the main drag in Las Vegas. They are very hardy, and I don't know why they have not been planted more in the colder places.
I hope to have more of these in the future.

I'll definetly have to get some this spring. 😀 After looking at pictures on the net i'm pretty sure that's what i see around town here. So i know they should be hardy here. 😀

Regards,
Jay

I have lots of recurvifolias, even variegated ones. I've been growing them in South Jersey for way more than 5 years too. Another great tropical looking and hardy yucca to try in colder areas is yucca gloriosa. It's very similar in appearance to recurvifolia, but a bit hardier, maybe half a zone hardier. My tallest gloriosa is about 9 feet tall, and I have no idea of how old it is. It was given to me last spring from a Cathlolic Brothers summer boarding house in Ocean City, NJ. They had about 4 big ones that they needed to remove because they were starting to get too big and were poking people.

Hi Jim,
Can you post any pics you have here? I sure would like to see that 9' gloriosa!

Hi Jim,

That's great. I have never even thought of yucca gloriosa. I will have to give that one a try also. Some pictures would be awesome. 😀

Regards,
Jay

Here is a pic of my verigated recurvifolia 😀

I planted a couple of recurvs late this summer at my new house. 😕 Hopefully they make it through the winter. 😀 One was a 5 gallon size so i would be happy if at least that one makes it.

The above recurvifolia only had about 4-5 leaves when it went into its first winter, and had no protection. It has done just fine 😀

This year has been very hard on my plants 🙁 My varigated recurvifolia was eaten completely down to the ground by a rabbit. Lucky for me it shot 3 more shoots up 🙂

I also planted one more recurvafolia this year and was not doing very good, but has been doing better sence this photo 🙂

Dang Rabbits. 🙁 I hope they recover for you. One of my biggest recurvs is starting to trunk. 🙂

Regards,
Jay

I will post some better pics later on this year. The new one is doing much better now 🙂

Jay
can't wait to see recent pics of your recurvafolia 8)

Sounds good Aaron. I'll try to take some pics this week of my recurvafolia. 🙂

This is a very common yucca here in Vancouver. I have one that has a 8" trunk and lots of leaves on it. It has grown very quickly this summer.
I will post some before summer and current photos tomorrow.
I know of some that have been there for at least 20 years.
They are hardy in Kelowna.

Here's a pic of my biggest y. recurvifolia. It sure grew a lot this summer. 🙂

Regards,
Jay