Plant in full to part day sun in a decently well-drained soil and irrigate infrequently to not at all. Cold hardy to at least 10°F and tolerant heavy clay soils (if they drain) and resistant to deer predation. The flowers are attractive to moths and other pollinators. This is an attractive plant in the dry landscape and with its sharp stiff leaves can make a good living barrier plant.

This plant has an incredibly wide native range from the coastal area of San Francisco south into Baja California and east into the southern Sierra Nevada range and Mount San Jacinto. There is even one subspecies (now raised to species level) in the inner Grand Canyon in Arizona.

Hesperoyucca whipplei plant has a somewhat confusing taxonomic history. It was first described as Yucca whipplei by the American botanist John Torrey (1796-1873) in 1859 in the Report on the United States and Mexican Boundary Survey (Botany 2(1): 222) and it was long known by this name even as its official name changed. It was placed in a subsection called Hespero-Yucca in 1871 by the German-American botanist George Engelmann. In 1876 the British botanist John Gilbert Baker elevated Hesperoyucca to the level of subgenus and finally in 1893, the American botanist William Trelease formally recognized Hesperoyucca as a genus, describing this plant as Hesperoyucca whipplei. The reasons separating it from Yucca as listed in the Illustrated Handbook of Succulent Plants: Monocotyledons edited by Urs Eggli (2001) are: Hesperoyucca differs clearly from Yucca in that it forms a definite bulb in the seedling stage (absent in Yucca but further study necessary), has a capitate stigma (6 lobed in Yucca), fruit is strictly loculicidally dehiscent (Yucca indehiscent or septicidal or septicidal and loculicidal), filaments basally attached to tepals and w/o apical thickening (Yucca has filaments not attached to tepals but held close to the ovary and bent outwards near the swollen apex), the often very large inflorescence of Hesperoyucca by far exceed the inflorescence size of Yucca and unbranched plants (ssp. whipplei) are monocarpic while branched plants (ssp. caespitosa) develop new rosettes from the leaf axils (both traits unknown in Yucca). DNA analysis has since confirmed this plant genetically distinct from Yucca.

The name for the genus has the Latin prefix "hespero" meaning "evening" in reference to the plants occurrence on the west coast of North America, on the side of the continent where the sun sets. The name Yucca was given to the genus by Linnaeus, perhaps by mistake, as it is the Latinized derivation of "yuca", the Caribbean name for Cassava (Manihot esculenta) an unrelated plant in the Euphorbia family that is native to the Caribbean area. The combined words reference the fact that these Yucca-like plants are found along the western edge of the North American continent. The specific epithet honors Amiel Weeks Whipple (1818–1863), a surveyor who oversaw the Pacific Railroad Survey to Los Angeles in 1853. The common name "Our Lord's Candle" is derived from its flame-shaped plumes of white flowers that look particularly dramatic when catching the light as sunrise or sunset. Other common names for this plant include Spanish bayonet, in reference to sharp leaf tips which those passing by needed to be wary of, Quixote Yucca and Foothill Yucca. 

The information about Hesperoyucca whipplei that is displayed on this web page is based on research conducted in our nursery's horticultural library and from reliable online resources. We will also include observations made about this plant as it grows in our nursery gardens and other gardens that we have visited, as well how the crops have performed in containers in our nursery field. We also incorporate comments that we receive from others and welcome hearing from anyone with additional information, particularly if they share cultural information that aids others growing this plant.