Overlooked And All Over Wyoming, Yucca Can Be Your New Prickly Landscaping Choice

CLARK — Rita Lovell didn’t plant the yucca that stole her heart. It volunteered, showing up on its own in the dry, rocky soil just outside her home. 

A Realtor with Canyon Real Estate in Cody, Lovell writes a blog about the things she loves about Wyoming. Her entry about the state’s native yucca heaps praise on this pointy plant. 

“In our area, the soapweed yucca tend to bloom about every three years,” wrote Lovell, reflecting on how some years all the yuccas bloom at once, and other years there are a few rogue plants blooming. 

When the flower stalks dry, Lovell likes to weave them into wreaths. 

Lovell shared photos of an epic yucca bloom in Clarks Fork Canyon. The plants light up the dry landscape. They also earn mentions in native plant guides like “Plants With Altitude,” published by the Biodiversity Institute at the University of Wyoming. 

“The lance-like leaves are stiff, coarse and sharp but worth the bloodletting for the tall spikes of whitish pendulant flowers,” write the “Plants With Altitude” authors, referring to the pendulous way yucca flowers hang down loosely and sway from side to side in the breeze. 

“Yuccas don’t bloom every year, but some years are phenomenal,” continues the guide. 

Yucca glauca is also known as soapweed because it can be used as soap and shampoo. Just crush its roots over a rock and extract lathering substances called saponins. 

As part of its lifecycle, soapweed depends on its symbiotic relationship with the yucca moth, which is the plant’s sole pollinator. 

“Female yucca moths lay eggs in the ovary and then deliberately pack pollen on the stigma. The growing moth larvae eat the developing seeds but usually not all of them,” according to the guide. “Before the fruits open to disperse seeds, the caterpillar chews its way out and drops to the ground, where it buries itself, spins a cocoon, and waits out the winter.” 

In the spring, the moths emerge just as the yucca blooms. They wait at the flowers to find a mate. 

Nature’s Prickly Friend

Yucca moths are just the first in a long line of living things that depend on soapweed. As these yuccas proliferate across the high plains — from Canada to Montana to Wyoming and Nebraska — the plants provide food and shelter for bull snakes, meadowlarks and bison. 

“We documented 6 mammalian, 13 avian, and 4 reptilian species using Y. glauca for cover, perches, basking sites, homes, and/or nests,” reported researchers from the University of Nebraska at Kearney. 

In 2021, they documented the yucca’s relationship with ornate box turtles, Ord’s kangaroo rats and found a nest with lark sparrow eggs in it. 

The research was supported by billionaire Ted Turner, who ranches bison in Western Nebraska and employs a team of biologists. 

Carter Kruse, a natural resource biologist with Turner Enterprises, told Cowboy State Daily he helps manage around 400,000 acres of bison grazing range in Nebraska and wanted to know more about yucca’s relationship with bison and other wildlife. 

The research team found bison depend on the yucca for protein during the winter. 

“They use their horns. I've watched them,” said Kruse, who is based in Ranchester. “They thrash their head around out there and they get it kind of coming out of the ground. And then they'll grab it with their mouth and eat the growing stem right at the root.”

At Your Local Nursery? 

Yucca glauca remains a fringe landscaping native, perhaps because its pointed leaves project a stand-offish vibe. 

“People that know about them love them, but not everybody knows about them,” Griff Sprout told Cowboy State Daily while working at his family’s Sprouts Greenhouse in Lander. “We always try to carry some.”

Sprouts and Blake Nursery in Big Timber, Montana, keep soapweed in the mix hoping more homeowners and landscape designers will take notice. 

Retail nurseries order soapweed to sell in pots from wholesale nurseries in Canada, New Mexico and California. At Sprouts, a 5-gallon potted soapweed might cost $40. 

For those who want to germinate them from seed, a 2015 article from the Wyoming Native Plant Society offers these tips: “Soaking the seed may help germination. 

Barely cover with soil to allow some light exposure. Stored seed should be cold stratified for 60 days or more before planting. If started in pots, make sure the pots are very deep and transplant when the plant has 2 or 3 grass-like leaves, which may take a full year.”

To collect seeds, yucca-curious gardeners might scan the edge of Interstate 25 north of Cheyenne or rest stops outside Billings, Montana. In unassuming places like these, they can search for dried, seed-filled yucca flower stalks protruding above leaves that look like a “Spanish Bayonet” (another common name).

The Wyoming Native Plant Society’s Bonnie Heidel provided Cowboy State Daily with a map of confirmed soapweed locations across the state.

“It’s in over half the counties of Wyoming,” wrote Heidel in an email. 

Heidel also noted April is now officially Native Plant Month in Wyoming. Indeed, a recent proclamation from the Gov. Mark Gordon declared, “It is important to encourage awareness about the importance of Wyoming’s native plants.” 

In the governor’s declaration, soapweed shares the spotlight with other native plants. 

But once, in what was perhaps its purest diva moment, yucca glauca was named “Plant of the Week” by the U.S. Forest Service. 

“These plants have a long history of beneficial use,” declared the USFS, listing off additional bonuses that come with planting native yucca. 

“The dried leaves of soapweed yucca can be woven into baskets, mats or sandals,” continued the USFS praise. 

Clearly, yucca glauca is a prickly friend to hungry bison and anyone in need of soap, all-natural footwear or a drought-resistant ornamental for their yard.

David Madison can be reached at david@cowboystatedaily.com.