Yuccas plants have a very, very specialized pollination system, being pollinated by an insect called the yucca

moth; this moth transfers the pollen from the stamens of one plant to the stigma of another intensionally, and at the same time lays an egg in the flower; the moth eggs when hatched to larva then eats some of the developing seeds, but far from all.

Yuccas are made up of the genus Yucca of 40+ species of perennials plants, bushes, and trees in the agave plant family Agavaceae. The Yucca is remembered for their spikes of evergreen, almost plastic feeling, spear like-shaped leaves and big clusters/bunches of whitish flowers. They originally are native to the very hot and very dry parts of Central America, North America, and the West Indies as they are home to a lot of hardy dry resistant plants like the Yucca.

Yuccas are seen a lot in gardens grown as ornamental plants. Many yuccas bear edible parts, including fruits, seeds, flowers, and more rarely roots. Dried out yucca wood/bark has a low ignition temperature and in fact the lowest ignition temperature of any other wood, making it one of the most perfect woods for fire starting.

New Mexico has it’s state flower “yucca flower”. No species name is given in the citation. Yucca whipplei, or Hesperoyucca whipplei