Speaker Series: Which Yucca Is It? Circling Back on 100 Years of Plant Collecting in New Mexico

A mysterious yucca at the Santa Fe Botanical Garden bore the label Yucca glauca—but was it really? The Great Plains Yucca at 6,000 feet seemed unlikely. As a plant taxonomist, my first instinct was to search my mental image gallery, but I had never seen this species before. Santa Fe lies in a yucca convergence zone, where at least three species overlap—so how do we know what this one is? Investigating this question led me deep into the work of Susan Delano McKelvey (1883–1964), an unsung botanist who documented yuccas across the Southwest in the 1920s and 1930s. Her research suggests a different answer. My talk will explore the puzzle of this yucca’s identity and McKelvey’s remarkable contributions to botany.

Dr. Karen Clary is a botanist specializing in plant taxonomy, archaeobotany, North American desert flora, and plant conservation. Her Ph.D. (University of Texas, 1997) was the first to compare DNA phylogeny with traditional morphology in Yucca species. She has described two new Yucca species, reinstated the genus Hesperoyucca, and contributed to Flora of North America. Clary co-founded the Castetter Laboratory for Ethnobotanical Studies at the University of New Mexico, producing over 400 reports on archaeological plant use. Her master's research examined coprolites from Chaco Canyon. From 1997–2017, she worked in plant conservation for the State of Texas, retiring as Director of the Plant Conservation Program at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. She is a Research Affiliate at UT Austin’s Plant Resources Center and a Contributing Scientist for the IUCN Red List Yucca species assessment team.

Members: $15.00
Not-Yet-Members: $20.00
https://visitsfbg.org/event/speaker-series-july-2025/