Dasylirion leiophyllum, Jeff Davis County, TX, USA

Dasylirion leiophyllum Engelm. ex Trel.

Smooth Sotol, green sotol, smooth sotol

Climate known 60 photographs

Every figure on this page is derived from public data by a stated rule and says its source; nothing here is written by a person or a model, except the Wikipedia passage, which is quoted and marked as such. How it is made.

Summary

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.

Text from Wikipedia, “Dasylirion leiophyllum”, CC BY-SA 4.0, quoted as written. Kept separate from everything derived here.

About the genus · Dasylirion

Dasylirion is a genus of succulent, rosette-forming plants in the Asparagaceae family, where it is included in the subfamily Convallarioideae. Most species are native to mountainous arid regions of Mexico, with some species also native to the Southwestern United States. The common name sotol is used in English and Spanish to describe various Dasylirion species, as well as giving its name to a distilled spirit made from some species of the genus.

Text from Wikipedia, “Dasylirion”, CC BY-SA 4.0, quoted as written.

Family

Asparagaceae

Described by

Engelm. ex Trel.

Native to

New Mexico, Texas, Mexico Northeast

Wild records

674 in range· 238 open

At a glance

Warmest month

33°C

Jun, mean day; nights 19 °C (CHELSA)

Rain

377mm/yr

6 wet months · peak Jul 64 mm (CHELSA)

Light

23–49DLI

mol/m²/day, winter to summer, open sky (CHELSA shortwave)

In short condensed by rule from the cultivation cards · not written by a person

Rain rule: a summer growing season, May to October in the northern hemisphere (May to October at the habitat, northern). Habitat rain 377 mm a year, wettest July at 64 mm, driest March at 11 mm (habitat calendar, northern hemisphere). Open sky over the habitat: 23 to 49 mol/m²/day. Cold floor -5.5 °C (1st-percentile habitat night, NASA POWER).

Each sentence is one card's own one-line form, written by the same rule as the card (Its year, Rain, Light, Temperature); the note cannot say what a card does not. Months are given for the northern hemisphere (set your site in Settings to change this), and the habitat's own alongside. The cards · the figures.

Also known as Dasylirion heteracanthium I.M.Johnst.; Dasylirion heteracanthum I.M.Johnst.; Dasylirion leiophyllum var. heteracanthum (I.M.Johnst.) Bogler; Dasylirion stewartii I.M.Johnst.; Dasylirion stewartii var. glaucum I.M.Johnst.

Cultivation

Its year Rain rule: a summer growing season, May to October in the northern hemisphere (May to October at the habitat, northern).

This species’ habitat figures, and what two fixed rules read from them.

The rain rule reads a summer growing season: 70% of the year's rain (294 mm of 377 mm) falls in May to October, warmer than the year (wet-season mean 23.3 °C against a yearly mean of 17.3 °C). Months are the habitat's, northern hemisphere; shifted six months for a southern-hemisphere collection: November to April.

Read from the median year of CHELSA monthly rainfall and mean temperature across the envelope cells: the rain rule takes the smallest set of months carrying 70% of the rain and calls it winter when its mean is more than half a degree below the year's, summer when more than that above, and neither in between; the temperature rule, used only under 120 mm, names the cooler six months when they are at least a degree cooler than the other six. Months are shifted for the other hemisphere only where the temperature curve gives a season to reverse. A reading of the curves, not an observation of the plant.

Rain Habitat rain 377 mm a year, wettest July at 64 mm, driest March at 11 mm (habitat calendar, northern hemisphere).

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

377 mm a year at the habitat, 294 mm of it May to October. Wettest month July at 64 mm, driest March at 11 mm. Across the envelope cells the year's total runs 282 mm to 469 mm (10th to 90th percentile of each cell's own year) (median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA; habitat calendar, northern hemisphere).

CHELSA monthly precipitation, median year across the envelope cells. The rain that falls where the species is recorded; nothing about how the plant takes water.

Light Open sky over the habitat: 23 to 49 mol/m²/day.

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

Open sky over the habitat: 23 to 49 mol/m²/day across the year (daily light integral, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA; the lowest 10th-percentile month across the cells is 21, the highest 90th-percentile month 51).

CHELSA shortwave radiation at each envelope cell, a daily-mean flux taken to a daily total and converted at 2.07 mol of PAR per MJ. The sky over the habitat, measured; what reaches a plant under a rock, a shrub or a shade cloth is not.

Warmth and air Cold floor -5.5 °C (1st-percentile habitat night, NASA POWER).

This species’ habitat figures, with their source.

Temperature

Coldest: the 1st-percentile night over 44 years at the typical cell is -5.5 °C, the absolute minimum -14.6 °C, about 51 frost nights a year (NASA POWER daily minima). Warmest: the 99th-percentile day is 39.4 °C. Monthly means: coldest night 1.7 °C in January (across the envelope cells -0.3 °C to 4.8 °C), warmest day 32.8 °C in June (median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA). Cold floor: -5.5 °C, which is the 1st-percentile night over 44 years at the typical cell (NASA POWER).

NASA POWER daily minima and maxima 1981–2024 at the typical cell, lapse-corrected to its elevation; CHELSA monthly means, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA. The cold floor is the figure named in its sentence. Not a measured survival limit for any plant in a pot.

Humidity

Relative humidity at the habitat: 41 to 51% across the year (monthly means, median year across the envelope cells, CHELSA). A figure about the air, saying nothing about how the plant takes water.

CHELSA relative humidity, median year across the envelope cells.

The figures the cards read from are in Climate below, and where they came from in Natural habitat.

Climate across the habitat

day night rain 10th–90th percentile across 226 habitat cells cold quarter: the three months around the coldest night extremes over 44 years at the typical cell, marked at the edge: undated DLI, mol/m²/dayRH %each on its own scale

Figures by month

	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec
Day °C	15 / 12–19	18 / 14–22	22 / 18–26	26 / 22–30	30 / 27–34	33 / 30–35	32 / 29–35	31 / 27–34	28 / 25–31	25 / 22–28	19 / 16–23	15 / 11–19
Night °C	2 / -0–5	4 / 1–7	6 / 4–10	11 / 8–14	15 / 13–19	19 / 17–22	20 / 17–23	20 / 17–23	17 / 14–20	12 / 10–15	6 / 4–9	2 / 0–5
Rain mm	14 / 11–19	13 / 8–16	11 / 7–15	16 / 9–20	31 / 14–39	47 / 29–61	64 / 48–87	64 / 47–90	54 / 37–74	34 / 27–45	14 / 10–18	15 / 10–19
DLI	25 / 23–26	31 / 29–33	40 / 38–41	47 / 46–48	49 / 49–51	49 / 48–51	46 / 44–47	43 / 41–43	38 / 37–39	32 / 31–34	26 / 24–28	23 / 21–25
RH %	49 / 47–50	46 / 44–48	43 / 40–45	41 / 38–44	43 / 39–46	46 / 42–49	49 / 47–53	51 / 49–54	51 / 49–54	49 / 47–51	47 / 46–49	49 / 47–50

Each figure is the median across the 226 grid cells holding the 610 in-range records, with the 10th–90th percentile span across those cells after the slash where it differs. Extremes and elevation were read at the typical cell 1169:1483 (31.525, -105.825). Over 44 years there: absolute minimum -14.6 °C, 1st-percentile night -5.5 °C, 99th-percentile day 39.4 °C. Normals: CHELSA V2.1 1981–2010 climatology, 0.05° cells (each the mean of ~36 1 km pixels). Envelope: median and 10th–90th percentile of each month across the 226 distinct grid cells holding the 610 in-range records; extremes and elevation at the typical cell 1169:1483 (its coldest month's mean night nearest the median across cells); its position is the cell centre. Extremes: NASA POWER (MERRA-2) daily 1981–2024, cell 31.50_-105.625, lapse-corrected -21 m at 6.5 °C/km. Elevation: ETOPO 2022, 1322 m (cell mean).

Natural habitat

Native range as published by WCVP; the marker is where the records are densest and decides nothing: the climate was read across every in-range record's cell, not at the marker.

Openly licensed records inside the range, framed on where they fall.

NativeNew Mexico, Texas, Mexico Northeast

Kew's description“subshrub or shrub” · “desert or dry shrubland”· quoted from WCVP, RBG Kew (CC BY 4.0); not derived here

Map marker29.317, -103.656 · in the densest population, 429 records (64% of those in range)

Evidence usedThe map marker and the climate envelope rest on all 674 georeferenced records inside the native range; the map shows only the 238 openly licensed ones, which alone would put the marker 276 km away. 1 record outside the range (gardens, roadsides, misidentifications) ignored. 64 in-range records are placed to worse than 10 km and stay on the map but off the climate.

The map markerthe map marker: the openly licensed record nearest the middle of the densest 1° population of the 674 in-range records; it decides nothing.

Photographs

Photographs: (c) Wendy McCrady, some rights reserved (CC BY) (2); (c) CK2AZ, some rights reserved (CC BY) (2); (c) Reid Hardin, some rights reserved (CC BY); (c) Bob Walker, some rights reserved (CC BY); no rights reserved · CC0 (2).

Photographs: iNaturalist did not answer when this page was built; what is shown came from the sources that did.

Papers naming this species

Works whose title or abstract names Dasylirion leiophyllum, most cited first, from OpenAlex (CC0). A mention, not a cultivation source: nothing on this page is drawn from them.

Precipitation timing and magnitude differentially affect aboveground annual net primary productivity in three perennial species in a Chihuahuan Desert grassland

Traesha R. Robertson, Colin Bell, John C. Zak, David T. Tissue (2008) · New Phytologist

Physiological responses of two contrasting desert plant species to precipitation variability are differentially regulated by soil moisture and nitrogen dynamics

Lisa Patrick, Kiona Ogle, Colin Bell, John C. Zak (2009) · Global Change Biology

Response of Chihuahuan Desert Mountain Shrub Vegetation to Burning

Gary M. Ahlstrand (1982) · Journal of Range Management

Efficient extraction of fructans from sotol plant (Dasylirion leiophyllum) enhanced by a combination of enzymatic and sonothermal treatments

Abril J. Pardo-Rueda, Armando Quintero‐Ramos, Diego B. Genovese, Alejandro Camacho-Dávila (2014) · Food and Bioproducts Processing

Ecological Attributes of the Shrubby Community of Sotol (Dasylirion leiophyllum) in the Chihuahuan Desert, Mexico

Martín Juárez-Morales, Martín Martínez-Salvador, Celia Chávez-Mendoza, Federico Villarreal‐Guerrero (2023) · Forests

Propagación in vitro de nolináceas mexicanas

Alberto Isaac Reyes Silva, Carlos Francisco Morales Muñoz, Martha Evelia Pérez Reyes, Eugenio Pérez Molphe Balch (2013) · Investigación y Ciencia de la Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes

Total Soluble Solid Content and Nutritional Values of Sotol (Dasylirion leiophyllum) in the Chihuahuan Desert as Affected by Rainy Season and Topography

Martín Juárez-Morales, Martín Martínez-Salvador, Celia Chávez-Mendoza, Federico Villarreal‐Guerrero (2024) · Horticulturae

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