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Moved into a new place and not sure what these are. I'm in Michigan.

I cut off the clearly dead leaves, but then there's a handful that are kind of spotty brown or half yellow which I left. Also, you can see a fair amount of leaves are bent, but otherwise appear green and healthy. How much more should I trim these guys up?

Also notice there's a 3rd plant by the bigger rocks that is kind of smashed down. I'm not sure if it just lost the positional battle with the one next to it, or what. Should I do anything special with that one?

Smashed down plant

Smashed plant 2

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Your plant is a kind of century plant, Yucca filamentosa. This Q&A has some tips about pruning it, although note that the advice is in response to a question about how to get rid of this plant, so it's not all directly applicable to you. Here's another Q&A with some info about pruning. Basically, you should trim off the flowering stalks after they're done flowering, and remove any dead leaves. But other than that you can pretty much leave this plant alone and it will take care of itself. The spotty leaves on your plant look normal to me, and not diseased or harmful to the plant, so I would leave those.

Yucca filamentosa reproduces by growing young plants (or "pups") from the roots, so the small one off to the side is probably a baby plant. I would leave it alone. It should eventually grow large enough to share space with the parent plants, and since they're joined at the roots it won't starve due to lack of sunlight.

If you want to relocate the small one, you can probably do so successfully. The roots are quite tough, so you might need a saw to cut the rhizome that joins the baby to the parent plant. Here's a guide to dividing yuccas.

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  • Awesome, thanks for the information and the links! It's interesting that the plant can flower. If they actually do, it might get close to a low tree branch.
    – Steve
    May 12, 2021 at 18:29

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