A small, short trunked or often trunkless Yucca with very hard, thick, bluish, deeply concave leaves. It is widely distributed over northern Mexico and the southwestern United States and is found in mountain areas up to 7900 ft. It is extremely hardy to frost and considered to possibly being the hardiest of all trunked Yucca. Slow but easy to grow and very ornamental.
Most yuccas have dry hard fruits, but the fruits of banana yucca are fleshy and succulent. They look roughly like short fat green bananas, thus the name. These fruits were a traditional food of the Apache and Navajo. They were prepared by roasting or baking, stripping out the seeds, pounding the remaining flesh into a pulp, forming the pulp into flat cakes, and sun-drying them for later use.
The resulting product is said to be nutritious, sweet, and delicious. The fruits were often picked before maturity and ripened off the plant to keep wildlife from eating them before they could be harvested Hardy for zones 6-11.