'Our Lord's Candle' Exhibits Once-in-a-Lifetime Bloom in Estuary

Volunteer Nature Docent Joan Brooks has been urging people to get to the estuary soon to see a Chaparral Yucca agave plant that started growing about 20 years ago is now in full bloom.

Only weeks after the plant blooms for the first time it will start to die.

"That's why I've been telling people to get out here quick," she said.

The Chaparral Yucca was found in the estuary by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Park Ranger Debbie Good while removing overgrown salt bush in the early 1990s and planted atop a mound near the Tijuana Estuary Visitor Center three or four years ago.

"The flower is so magnificent because the plant puts all it's energies into the effort to produce progeny in the form of seeds(which we will collect and use to propagate in our nursery) and then it lays down it's life for the future," she said.

"The yucca blossoms will probably start to brown and fall within the next couple weeks. It is fabulous, isn't it?"

Also known as Our Lord's Candle and Spanish Bayonet, Chaparral Yuccas can only be found in parts of Southern California, northwest Arizona and Baja California, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The yucca is recognized as a threatened or endangered plant by the Arizona Department of Agriculture.

"The plant has a single flower stalk, which is covered with fragrant, creamy white flowers. Night-flying moths pollinate the flowers," according to the USDA's National Resources Conservation Service and the UC Davis Arboretum.

Native American tribes ate the flowers and used other fibers of the stalk for fishing line and other purposes, the plant guide said.

As the 12-15 foot-high stalk of the Chapparel Yucca rose, Good said, it grew more than a foot in one night.

Also on the mound near the Visitor Center is a fish barrel cactus, barrel cactus and other plant species salvaged before the expansion of a fence along the U.S.-Mexico border in 2009, Good said.

"You see them out off East [Interstate] 8 all the time," she said, but the Chaparrel Yucca in the estuary is "a little bit more spectacular than the ones you find on the side of the road."

"that one did really well cause it was in a special cactus blend ihad made up