Moths and Yucca

Hello Gardeners, I'm Amanda McNulty with Clemson Extension and Making It Grow. Some hummingbird moths, so named because of their size, visit yucca flowers at night to enjoy their nectar. But the important pollinators are yucca moths. Relatively small white insects, the female moth enters yucca flowers and uses special mouthparts called tentacles to collect pollen, which she rolls into a ball to transport. She lays her eggs in the ovary of a yucca flower, and then places some of the fresh pollen onto the female stigma. Since pollination has occurred, the flower's ovules develop into seeds which the larva consume. The female also leaves a pheromone alerting other moths they aren't the first to visit - if too many eggs are laid, the seeds abort along with the developing moth larva. This is a great example of mutualism - the plant must be pollinated and the moth larva must eat those yucca seeds to develop.