Nolinas are some of my favorite desert plants, and so I have a few of them in various places in the front garden. They’re related to Agaves and Yuccas, and in fact were once considered part of the Agave family. They’ve now been split out into the Nolinaceae, along with Beaucarnea (sold in many plant stores as “ponytail palm,” though it’s not a palm at all) and Dasylirion, which readers in the Tucson area (and say hello, why doncha) will know as “sotol” or “desert spoon.”
Nolina microcarpa is probably my favorite among Nolinas, if for no other reason than it’s the one I see most often while hiking in the desert. Kat and I wandered past a few dozen of them on that waterfall hike in April, and I saw hundreds hiking in Sedona a couple years back. It’s less dramatic than some of its cousins, for instance the extravagant Nolina parryi, but few things scream sense of place to me the way a rosette of Nolina microcarpa leaves do, subtle and unassuming among the chollas or ponderosa pines or junipers.
So I planted one in my yard a couple three years ago, and it has dutifully and unobtrusively put out leaf after long, tapered leaf since then, asking nothing in the way of water or fertilizer or attention and holding its spot in the garden well. But today, carrying 60-pound bags of concrete from the truck into the garage, I realized that the garden held a long green-gray spike that I hadn’t seen before.
It was the Nolina microcarpa, flowering.
Five-foot, nine-inch dork pictured on right for scale.
I am happy.
