New Mexico State Flower: Yucca

New Mexico State Flower Coloring

When you drive across New Mexico, Southern Colorado, Texas and Arizona, you see lots of Yucca. It actually grows up in the Midwest too, but it's a plant that loves hot and dry places.  Its flower is White or Cream and the leaves are Green. But when the flowers dry up they turn Brown and hard. At that point they make a lovely dried flower decoration and I used to keep them around my house in vases.

The bell-shaped blooms emit a delicate, sweet fragrance which lures the Yucca’s sole pollinator, the Yucca moth. The relationship between New Mexico’s State Flower and the Yucca moth is a highly unusual and symbiotic one. 

Each species of Yucca plant is pollinated by a different species of Yucca moth uniquely suited to collect pollen from its Yucca plant. The moths roll the pollen into a ball and drop it into the stigma of a different Yucca plant of the same species. At the same time, the moth lays an egg in the flower. This happens in the early Summer, June or July when the flowers are in bloom. 

Order the State Flowers Coloring Book here by clicking on the Photo.