Desert Spoon
Dasylirion wheeleri
A stiff rosette for full sun and gritty ground; standing wet through winter is its usual end.
- Type
- Shrub · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Blue-green · Silver and gray
- Sunlight
- Full sun, with no shade at all.
- Watering
- Water sparingly — it handles drought well.
- Feeding
- One light feed in spring.
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- June
- Pruning
- Pull off the dead outer leaves in spring, and nothing else.
- Mar–Jun Spring Growth
- Jun–Aug Flowering
- Aug–Nov Growing
- Nov–Dec Winter Dormancy
- Jan–Mar Winter Dormancy
- Plant spacing
- 4 ft 11 in
- In-row spacing
- 4 ft 11 in
- Between rows
- 4 ft 11 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Shallow, wide and fine
- Working depth
- 4–12 in
- Can reach
- 18 in down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 7.5–12 ft across, about 1.5–2.5× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 6 in of soil
Roots run out flat and near the surface to catch light rain before it drains past, and they rot in ground that stays wet. Width of pot and sharpness of drainage matter to it; depth of pot hardly does.
The habit is Desert Spoon’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
Agave, Yucca, Cistus, Festuca glauca
Shrubs, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com