Home / Browse / Dasylirion / Green Sotol

iNaturalist — CC, credited & licensed per image

Liliaceae family

Green Sotol Dasylirion leiophyllum

Native

Green Sotol is a perennial shrub native to the lower 48 states.

More about this plant

Dasylirion leiophyllum is a species of flowering plant in the asparagus family known by the common names green sotol, smooth-leaf sotol, and smooth sotol. It is native to North America, where it occurs in Chihuahua and Coahuila in Mexico and New Mexico and western Texas in the United States. It was first collected by Valery Havard in 1880 and was described by William Trelease in 1911. Wikipedia →

Growing & care

USDA PLANTS · TRY

Conditions

Sources · Conditions

Cold hardiness (derived) — Hardiness

Hardiness: ≥ zone 8 derived from its U.S. range

Size & form

Sources · Size & form

USDA PLANTS — Lifespan

TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0) — Foliage

Lifespan: Perennial
Foliage: Broadleaf

In the garden

Shrub layer — Sits in the shrub of a layered food forest or polyculture.Open guide →

derived roles

Species characteristics from USDA PLANTS (public domain) + TRY (CC BY) — general guidance, not a guarantee for your exact site. Deer "browsing" is documented palatability, not a deer-proof claim.

Wildlife & pollinators

How pollinator value is scored →

✦ Bees 2 bee visitors

2 native & managed bee species are documented visiting Green Sotol :

Anthophorula completa Perdita bradleyana · mining bee

Visitor records (observations, not exhaustive) from Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI →

How we know this (2) Methods & honest limits

Photosynthesis Direct fact

A recorded categorical fact: each species is tagged C3 (standard), C4 (heat/water-efficient) or CAM (succulent, night-time CO₂ uptake) — or a facultative combination. We only show a trait card for the noteworthy C4/CAM cases; C3 is the unremarkable majority, kept in the data but not surfaced as a card.

Kattge, J. et al. TRY plant trait database — Categorical Traits Dataset (2012).

Climate niche (heat tolerance & native rainfall) Derived

We take the plant’s U.S. county range and look up each county’s long-term climate, then summarise: native rainfall = the median annual rainfall across its counties; heat tolerance = the warm end (90th percentile) of average temperature across its range (mirroring how our cold-hardiness floor uses an extreme). Counties + medians blunt the roadside/observer bias that makes point-level climate unreliable. Needs at least five placeable counties.

Honest limits: A realized, sampling-biased niche (where it has been recorded, not its physiological optimum), and county climate is coarse — large Western counties span deserts and mountains. Derived guide, never a measured fact.

Realized-niche / climate-envelope approach (Pearson & Dawson 2003; Soberón 2007). Climate: NOAA NCEI nClimDiv county normals (1991–2020).

Derived values are computed from open data by a published method — labelled, cited, and never shown as a direct observation. Full methodology →

Sources for this entry (17) Open & cited

[01] Scientific name & family — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)

[02] Growth habit & duration — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)

[03] Native status & distribution — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503)

[04] Common name — USDA PLANTS (via GBIF)

[05] Invasive / introduced status — USDA PLANTS (DwCA, Zenodo 17903503) — native status

[06] Photos — iNaturalist — CC, credited per image

[07] Description — Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)

[08] Ecological value — GloBI

[09] Foliage — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)

[10] Functional traits — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)

[11] Photosynthetic pathway — TRY Plant Trait Database (CC BY 4.0)

[12] Climate niche — Derived — realized climate niche from U.S. county occurrences (GBIF) × NOAA NCEI county climate normals 1991–2020 (public domain)

[13] Cold hardiness (derived) — Derived from U.S. range × USDA PHZM zones

[14] Human uses — Dr. Duke's Phytochemical & Ethnobotanical Databases (USDA, CC0)

[15] Bee visitors — Noori et al. 2026 (Zenodo, CC BY 4.0) · via GloBI

[16] Flower-visitor value (derived) — Noori et al. 2026 (CC BY 4.0) · GloBI

[17] County range — GBIF Open Data — open-licensed occurrences (CC0/CC-BY) → county

Spot an error or have a better photo? Every field links to its source, and the whole dataset is open.

Cite this page Open data, please attribute

PlantKey’s data is open under CC BY-SA 4.0 — free to reuse and adapt, with attribution and the same licence. Photos keep their own per-image licence + credit (see Sources above).

Citation

Loading…

BibTeX

Loading…

Enable JavaScript for a ready-to-copy citation with today’s access date, or cite this page’s URL with the date you viewed it.

Ecological value open data

1 / 5 Keystone

Keystone (host) value — caterpillar, specialist-bee & monarch hosting. A low number means “not a keystone host,” not “low value”: generalist flower-visitor value is shown separately below and in Bees & wildlife.

Caterpillar host 1

Flower-visitor value derived 2

Recorded flower-visitor breadth — observations, not a nectar measurement. open data

Deep dive

Caterpillar host · 1/5 — native butterfly & moth caterpillars that feed on this genus — the base of the food web (more caterpillars → more songbirds). Genus-level keystone count from Warren II 2026 (CC0; Tallamy host-use records), gap-filled by our GloBI derivation.

Counts are genus-level and banded 0–5. Full rubric →

Host / keystone value from open interaction data. How this is scored →

📍 In your area live

Native to the U.S.

Recorded in 2 states.

Open occurrence records place it in 10 counties across 2 states · GBIF (CC0/CC-BY)

Native — Conterminous United States

Recorded in 2 states/territories

Conservation

Invasive? No

Toxicity & pet safety

Check the ASPCA pet database →

Educational, not veterinary advice. If you suspect your pet ate this plant, contact a vet or pet poison-control line.

Documented human uses Dr. Duke's

1 use-records

Historically recorded for

Tooth Ache

A historical record of how this plant has been used — not medical or dietary advice, and not a claim that it is effective or safe. Many plants are toxic; never ingest or treat with a wild plant without expert guidance and a confirmed identification. Dr. Duke's →

Functional traits TRY · Dryad

Seed mass small

9 mg

small seed — straightforward to sow

Heat tolerance hot

Heat-tolerant

ranges into genuinely hot-summer regions — takes real heat

Native rainfall arid

Arid (~13 in/yr)

native to low-rainfall country — strongly drought-adapted

Deep dive — what these mean

Seed mass 9 mg — average weight of one seed. Bigger seeds are easier to hand-collect & direct-sow; dust-fine seeds need surface-sowing.

Photosynthesis — the standard “C3” pathway most plants use, most active in cooler, moister, moderate-light conditions. (pathway C3)

Climate niche — the rainfall & warmth of where it actually grows in the U.S., from its county range. A realized niche (where it’s recorded, not its ideal), so read it as a guide. ~13 in/yr rainfall · warm-end avg 67°F across 10 counties (GBIF × NOAA 1991–2020 normals)

Measured traits from TRY + Werner et al. (N-fix), Fan et al. (roots) & FungalRoot — general guidance, not species-specific prescriptions.

More modules coming

Green Sotol Dasylirion leiophyllum

Growing & care

Wildlife & pollinators

Related plants