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2 Beaucarnea Recurvata - Elephant's Foot or Ponytail Palm - $75 (Murphysboro)
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2 Beaucarnea recurvata, the elephant's foot or ponytail palm for $75. One is about 4 feet tall and the other one is about 2 feet tall.
Beaucarnea recurvata, the elephant's foot or ponytail palm, is a species of flowering plant in the family Asparagaceae. The species is endemic to eastern Mexico; according to IUCN it is now confined to the state of Veracruz, but Plants of the World Online also cites it as occurring in Oaxaca, Puebla, San Luis Potosí, and Tamaulipas. Despite its common name, it is not closely related to the true palms (Arecaceae). It has become popular in Europe and worldwide as an ornamental plant. There are 350-year-old Beaucarneas registered in Mexico.
It is an evergreen perennial growing to 8 metres (26 ft) in height, with an enormously expanded caudex for storing water. This caudex can be as great as 14 m (46 ft) girth in the wild. The single palm-like stem produces terminal tufts of strap-shaped, recurved leathery leaves, sometimes hair lock-shaped in the ends, and with occasional panicles of small white flowers once the plant reaches over 10 years of age.
The trunk is swollen at the base and slender higher up; young plants are unbranched, but become well branched with age. The almost spherical caudex in the youth stage later becomes broadly conic and very wide at the base. The bark is smooth or finely cracked. The leaves are green, linear, slightly recurved and bent, thin, flat or slightly ridged. They are up to 180 cm (71 in) long and up to 2 cm (0.79 in) wide. The flowers are creamy-white, 1.5 mm diameter, produced in a dense panicle 90–112 cm tall.