• Florida's moths play a part in the general pollination of its plants.hawk hummingbird moth image by Scott Slattery from Fotolia.com
  
  Florida's warm evenings make after-dark moth pollination a common occurrence. For some of the state's plants, moths do not just contribute to the pollination process along with bees, birds and butterflies; some plants have specifically evolved to make themselves more available to moth pollination. Others can be pollinated only by a specific kind of moth. Even plants not particularly suited to moth pollination can benefit from being near moth plants.
  
  

Yucca

• Each specific species of yucca plant can only be pollinated by its matching yucca moth. One common Florida yucca is the mound-lily yucca (Yucca gloriosa). It attracts its moths with a sword-like cluster of 3-inch wide, purple-tinged white blooms that can grow in a mass that can be 6 to 8 feet long. How high that bloom sword sticks into the air, above the plant's bluish- or grayish-green leaves, depends on the yucca's age. Younger mound-lily yuccas stay in 2-to-5-feet tall clumps. As they age, they slowly develop trunks that can lift their bloom swords as much as 6 to 8 feet in the air. Those blooms attract their symbiotic female moths, who need the yucca plant to procreate. The moths lay an egg into one or more of the yucca bloom's six chambers, from which a caterpillar emerges when the yucca produces a pollinated seed-filled pod.
  
  

Pink Evening Primrose

• Petals that unfold each evening and stay open until morning make the pink evening primrose (Oenothera Speciosa), a nightly moth target. The primrose's bowl-shaped petals are white in late spring and reflect the moonlight to make it easier for moths to find them at night. Only as the growing season continues and the plant reaches its full height of 8 to 24 inches do the edges of the primrose's almost 2-inch wide petals produce the color for which it is named. The bloom's stamen remains yellow, and above that stamen hover hawk moths, which behave much like a hummingbird drawing pollen. Hawk moths attracted to the pink evening primrose's scent can also pollinate other nearby flowers.
  
  

Night-Blooming Jasmine

• Tiny, greenish-white blooms shaped like trumpets extend from the glossy 4 to 8 inch leaves of the night-blooming jasmine and wait for a moth to carry its pollen away. The flowers bloom periodically throughout the growing period. At night they project a subtle fragrance that some companies market in their bath products. The scent distinguishes the sprawling jasmine shrub, which can be used as a landscape border or background, more than the tiny flowers that dot its 12-foot-long stems that look like vines. Night blooming jasmine can attract neighbors as well as moths. A native of Jamaica and the West Indies, the night blooming jasmine takes well to Florida's climate. In northern and some parts of central Florida, it dies in response to a brief frost, but sprout again in spring.