Beautiful little flowers on our Red Yucca (Hesperaloe parviflora)

We have two Red Yucca plants in our garden. Both are magnificent: The leaves, with curlicue strings, are about two feet high. The flower stalks are about five feet high. Currently, each plant has only a single flower stalk; we expect them to have more shortly. We’ve seen these plants with dozens of stalks. The flowers are about 3/4 inch long.

The Red Yucca, or Hesperaloe parviflora, is not a yucca, though it looks like one. As the Texas Native Plants Database says,

Red yucca (which is not a yucca) is a stalwart in the landscapes of Texas and the southwest. Its dark green rosette of long, thin leaves rising fountain-like from the base provides an unusual sculptural accent, its long spikes of pink to red to coral bell-shaped flowers last from May through October, and it is exceedingly tough, tolerating extreme heat and cold and needing no attention or supplemental irrigation once established, although many people remove the dried flower stalks in the fall. Unlike yucca, the leaves are not spine-tipped, and have fibrous threads along the edges. Red yucca is native to Central and Western Texas. A yellow-flowered form has recently become available in nurseries, and a larger, white-flowered species native to Mexico, giant hesperaloe (H. funifera), which has only been found in one location in the Trans-Pecos, is also available. Hummingbirds are attracted to the flowers.

Our Red Yucca trumpet flowers definitely attract hummingbirds, as well as a wealth of insects. The plants are excellent for desert landscaping, since they don’t need to be watered. In fact, we planted the first one three years ago in an area of our garden that was completely barren, and now it fills that space perfectly.