Forms: 6–7 iucca, 6–9 yuca, 7–8 jucca, 7– yucca. [In sense 1, found in the forms juca (Amerigo Vespucci, 1497), yuca (Clusius, 1567); of Carib origin.]
1. The common name in Western South America and Central America for the CASSAVA. (Now usually in form yuca, for distinction from sense 2.)
1555. Eden, Decades (Arb.), 67. They haue also an other kynde of rootes, whiche they call Iucca, wherof they make breade in lyke maner.
1597. Gerarde, Herbal, III. cxlix. 1359. or Yuca or Iucca…. The roote wherof the bread Casaua, or Cazaua is made.
1631. R. H., Arraignm. Whole Creature, ix. 67. Figs and Lemmans from Spaine, Jucca from Cuba, Mayze from Peru.
1726. J. Stevens, trans. A. de Herrera Tordesillas’ Hist. Amer., IV. 135. A Roll of Yuca, being a clammy Root, like a Patata.
1851. Mayne Reid, Scalp Hunters, xx. There were ‘lairs’ among the underwood thatched with the palmated leaves of the yuca.
1894. C. D. Tyler, in Geogr. Jrnl., III. 481. The masato … is … the masticated and fermented root of the yuca.
2. Any plant of the liliaceous genus Yucca, native of the warmer parts of N. America, and extensively cultivated for ornament, characterized by a woody stem with a crown of usually rigid narrow pointed leaves and an upright cluster of white bell-shaped flowers; popularly known as Adam’s needle, particular species being also called Spanish bayonet and Spanish dagger. (Almost always in form yucca.)
1664. Evelyn, Kal. Hort., 83. [Plants] not perishing but in excessive Colds,… Opuntia, or the smaller Indian Fig, Jucca, Seseli Æthiop.
1731. Miller, Gard. Dict., s.v., The Narrow-leav’d Carolina Yucca.
1841. Mantell, in Phil. Trans., CXXXI. 140. The … trunks of the Clathrariæ,… Yuccæ, and arborescent ferns.
1851. Mayne Reid, Rifle Rangers, i. (1853), 18. The thickets of yucca and acacia-trees.
1872. C. King, Mountain. Sierra Nev., i. 20. Tall stems of yucca bore up their magnificent bunches of bluish flowers.
3. attrib. and Comb., as yucca-flower, -plant, -root; yucca-borer, (a) a N. American moth, Megathymus yuccæ, whose larva bores into the roots of yucca-plants; (b) a Californian weevil, Yuccaborus frontalis; yucca-moth, a tineid moth of the genus Pronuba, esp. P. yuccasella, which lays its eggs in the ovary of the yucca-plant, and deposits a ball of pollen on the stigma, thus fertilizing the seeds on which the larvæ feed; yucca-palm, yucca-tree, any arborescent species of Yucca.
1895. Comstock, St. Insects, 367. A much better known species is the *Yucca-borer, Megathymus yuccæ.
1753. Chambers’ Cycl. Suppl, *Yucca-Bread, or Cassada-Bread.
1892. Rep. Missouri Bot. Gard., 99. The *Yucca moth and Yucca Pollination.
1851. Mayne Reid, Scalp Hunters, xviii. 124. She was standing near one of the *yuca palm trees that grew up from the azotéa.
1828–31. Tennyson, in Ld. Tennyson, Mem. (1897), I. 57. She gave them the *yuccaroot … Of sweet Xaraguay.
1828. G. E. Lyon, Jrnl. Mexico, I. 142. Most uninteresting country, bearing here and there a stunted bush or a *Yucca-tree.
