How To Make Yucca Shampoo

Learn how to make yucca shampoo right at home. Used extensively by native peoples, there are many yucca soap benefits including helping dandruff and hydrating your skin.

By Nancy Anderson
Updated on March 9, 2023
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by AdobeStock/wollertz

Learn how to make yucca shampoo right at home. Used extensively by native peoples, there are many yucca soap benefits including helping dandruff and hydrating your skin.

The various species of yucca — some known today as Spanish bayonet, Adam’s-needle, soapweed, datil, whipple or dagger plant — were of prime economic importance to many native tribes of the American Southwest, including the Navajo and Pueblo peoples. The sharp-pointed, waxy leaves furnished excellent fibers for weaving. The long flower stalks and creamy white blossoms were used by the Apaches as food. And most important for our purposes,  the roots of the yucca provided many Native Americans with natural shampoo and natural laundry soap.

Yucca root (called a mole) contains the compound saponin, which has detergent properties and seems to exert a particularly beneficial effect on the protein in animal fiber.

And there’s no reason why you can’t try making yucca soap and yucca shampoo yourself because the versatile plants — formerly classified as Liliaceae, but more recently placed in the new family Agavaceae — are found in the southwestern (and, to some extent, southeastern) United States, Mexico and the West Indies.

You Can Dig It!

Yucca root can be gathered at any time of the year, provided the ground isn’t frozen. However, since regulations regarding wild plant collection vary, be sure to check your state’s laws before you begin to dig. Then, if there aren’t any restrictions on gathering yuccas in your area, select a small- to medium-sized plant that can be dug up without too much difficulty — even a young bush will yield enough roots for a dozen or so shampoos. Ensure there is a healthy population around before digging any up, leave some to grow back for the next year.

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