Meaning

noun any of several evergreen plants of the genus Yucca having usually tall stout stems and a terminal cluster of white flowers; warmer regions of North America

originVariant of yuca, sometimes said to be from Kari'na yuca (“cassava (Manihot esculenta)”), but this latter appears to be a ghost word. The word was applied to plants of the genus Yucca (now the main sense), because Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and others confused them with the cassava.

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 3.0