Wildflower Wednesday: Invited Guests and the Party Crashers

It has been a long time since I have participated in Gail's Wildflower Wednesday.  It's been a busy summer with little time for blogging, but it also seems that most of the native plants I have don't start blooming until late summer.  I've learned so much about native plants over the years from Gail and the WW posts and added more of them to my garden as I've learned about their benefits to pollinators.  So I'm very happy to join in once again with some of the late bloomers from my garden.

If you've read my last few posts, you know that the current star of my garden is Rudbeckia triloba, also known as Brown-eyed Susan.  In fact, it's pretty hard to miss as it's taken over the front of the Lily Bed as well as parts of the Butterfly Garden.  A volunteer that mysteriously appeared in my garden a few years ago, it has made itself quite at home here.  But you can never have too many Susans, right?

Joe-Pye weed is still hanging on at the back of the butterfly garden.  As I've mentioned before, this is definitely the native species of Eutrochium purpureum because the stems are green, not purplish, and the flowerheads not as showy a pink as many of the other types.

'Little Joe,' however, has much prettier flowers and the dark purple stems that I love.  I'd like to plant more of the taller Joes with this coloring at the back of the butterfly garden, but first I have to contend with the semi-thugs that have taken up residence there . . .

 . . . the Obedient Plants.  I have a love-hate relationship with this plant:  I hate its aggressiveness and pull out numerous seedlings in the spring, but in the fall I love these white, pink, and purple blooms.

I noticed today that the pinkish blossoms actually have freckles and remind me of foxglove blooms.  Since I have never had much luck with foxgloves in my garden, perhaps I should change my attitude and think of these as the poor-man's foxglove.  The bees like them, no matter their name.

Although I have planted more natives over the past few years, the most prominent and prolific ones seem to be the ones I didn't plant.  Common Evening Primrose Oenothera biennis is one of those mystery plants that suddenly appear in my garden and I allow to let grow because I'm not sure if it's a weed or something I actually planted and forgot about.

At 6-7 feet tall, it's hard to ignore.  The flowers remain open from evening till morning, but might also stay open on a cloudy day.

Despite its classification as a "Prairie Wildflower" by the Illinois Wildflowers website, I'd classify it as a weedy wildflower.  It has a long taproot, which explains why my efforts to eradicate it have been unsuccessful.  Still, these pretty little yellow flowers are rather attractive, and they do attract moths and the occasional hummingbird and bees, so I guess they're not all bad.

Bees also like thistle as do various birds, including the goldfinches.  However, there are more than enough plants here for the bees and plenty of coneflowers for the finches, so this lone thistle--definitely a weed in my opinion--is going to have to go.

Another volunteer that appears every year is the Pokeweed.  It's another one of those with a long taproot, which is why my simply cutting it off after it blooms never quite gets rid of it.

Because it has been well-mannered so far, I usually leave it alone for awhile so the birds can enjoy the berries.  The berries, as you can see, aren't ripe yet, but when they are, they'll be a deep dark purple.  They are toxic to humans, though, and can stain your hands, so I will definitely let the birds pick them!

Goldenrod is also just beginning to bloom. I'm not sure what type this is, because all the plants are volunteers.  And talk about volunteers--it would take over my garden if I let it!   I pull some of the excess seedlings every year, but I leave the rest because, besides its value to insects, it really does make a pretty backdrop for other flowers, like these seedheads of the gray-headed coneflowers.  It also makes a nice filler for flower arrangements.

As you can see, many of the natives in my garden are actually volunteers, probably gifts from the birds.  Too often it seems the natives I actually plant in my garden don't germinate or disappear, probably overcome by the thugs already there.  But sometimes I am pleasantly surprised, as I was by the plant I wanted to focus on this month.

A few weeks ago I noticed a few tall plants amidst the emerging goldenrod and asters.  I was pretty sure they were weeds until I noticed small flowerbuds on them.  I was intrigued and decided to leave them alone.  Thank goodness I did!  When they bloomed, I was finally able to identify them as Common Sneezeweed, Helenium Autumnale.

A few facts about this Sneezeweed:

• Zone 3-8, blooms August --October
• 3-5 feet tall with not much branching but an abundance of flowers
• likes wet to moist conditions--we had the perfect spring/early summer for it this year
• the foliage is bitter and toxic, with some reports of livestock poisoning from it
• despite the name, it does not cause sneezing.  In the past, the leaves and flowers were dried and used as snuff, hence the name

Common visitors to the Sneezeweed include all kinds of bees, some wasps, Syrphid flies, butterflies, and beetles.  Most suck the nectar, but some also collect the pollen.

So how did these pretty bee-magnets find their way into my garden?? I doubted they were volunteers, so I searched through my garden journals, and sure enough, I discovered that I had purchased a seedling at our local Prairie Plant Society sale two years ago.  Because I had seen no sign of it the past two years, I had forgotten all about it--thank goodness I didn't pull it out!  Sometimes there are benefits to being forgetful--it makes for some happy surprises every year in the garden:)  Aside from that, seeing the Sneezeweed in full bloom gives me hope that some of the other natives I've planted in the past two years and haven't seen a sign of may just be biding their time and will surprise me next year.

I am enjoying all these late additions to the garden, whether they were invited or not.  For more information on wildflowers and natives, be sure to visit our gracious hostess Gail at Clay and Limestone.

August Wildflower Wednesday--Weed or Wildflower?

Most gardeners are familiar with the old saying "A weed is just a flower in the wrong place." 
And I daresay most of us would nod our heads in agreement but have to add "Some plants really are just weeds!"   I know that I will never have anything nice to say about the weedy grasses and Creeping Charlie that I am constantly pulling out of my garden.  Every gardener has her own weedy nemesis.  But there are some plants that really could be called a weed in one garden and a wildflower in another, depending on the situation and the personal preference of the gardener.  Let's look at a few that have appeared in my garden this summer.

About a month ago, my friend and I were walking around the arbor bed when we noticed these small yellow blooms on a very tall plant.  Now you have to understand that the back of the arbor bed is where I often plant something until I can find a better place for it.  It's also the place where I scatter a lot of seeds in the spring, so when I see a mystery plant, I usually leave it alone until I can identify it.

Something about these blooms reminded me of evening primrose, though I was thinking of the small plants that grow under a foot tall.  Mine was huge!  But when I did a little research, sure enough, it was a primrose--Oenothera biennis, Common Evening Primrose, which can grow to 7 feet tall.

Yellow flowers, which are actually quite attractive though small, appear on the top of the plant and are open from evening till morning, though they may remain open on cloudy days.  The blooms have a mild lemony scent and are attractive to moths, especially sphinx moths;  hummingbirds; and various types of bees and beetles. The seeds are eaten by goldfinches. 

Despite the attraction to different insects and wildlife and the cute little flowers, Oenothera biennis still looks like a weed to me.  As I read on, I found that it has a "fleshy taproot" and its "seeds can remain viable in the soil after 70 years."  That clinched its fate--I promptly removed it from my garden!

Another mystery plant appeared in the Lily Bed early in the summer.  Usually any volunteer in this area that I don't recognize turns out to be a weed.  But the small pink blooms that eventually opened looked promising so that I hoped this might be some unusual wildflower that the birds had kindly planted for me, as they did a few years ago with some Rudbeckia. 

I had no luck in finding it in my wildflower book or searching blindly through websites.  But one day while visiting my parents, I spied the same plant growing near their house.  I was so excited to find it and asked my dad if he knew what it was.  Sure enough, Dad, a farmer for all of his 89 years, immediately dismissed it with, "That's a Wild Four O'clock; it's a weed and will take over if you let it!"

Like other Four O'Clocks, the blooms open in late afternoon and stay open in the evening, closing in the morning.  The blooms didn't seem to last long on my wild plant.

When I checked this one out, it was listed on my go-to-source, illinoiswildflowers.info, but it was also listed on many other sites as an invasive weed.  According to Illinois Wildflowers, Mirabilis nyctaginea is visited by long-tongued bees, short-tongued bees, moths, and possibly hummingbirds.  But again those warning phrases: "A long taproot" and "reseeds."  This time I decided Father knows best and ripped it out.

This weedy wildflower pops up in different places every year, but it's one I easily recognize now.   Ever since I found a huge specimen of  Phytolacca Americana, better known as Pokeweed, behind our barn several years ago, I have had a few volunteers in the garden every year.  I usually cut them down or try to dig them out (again that taproot, so it's not easy), but I left this one just for this post.  They're really rather attractive plants--if you have the right place for them--especially late in the season when the stems turn reddish-purple and dark purple berries appear.  I've written about Pokeweed before, so if you would like to see the mature berries, you can check them out here.  Despite the fact the berries are popular with songbirds, these are not going to have the chance to mature--I have enough thugs in my garden without encouraging any more.

Speaking of thugs, here is a plant I purposely planted--Physostegia virginiana.  Anyone who has ever planted Obedient Plant knows that it is anything but. Although I would never call this native a "weed,"  I have a love-hate relationship with it.

 

 

 I love the white or pink blooms in the fall when so much in my garden is fading away. But it is an aggressive re-seeder.  Fortunately, the seedlings are easily recognizable, and I usually pull out many of them in the spring before they crowd out other natives in my Butterfly Garden.  This one stays--but not all its progeny.

 

And finally, a new wildflower/native this year that I am truly excited about!  I noticed these yellow blooms from a distance last week and thought at first they were more yellow coneflowers.  But closer inspection revealed something different altogether.  The blooms looked so familiar to me, but I wasn't sure until I looked through my wildflower book.  These are Sneezeweed, possibly Helenium autumnale.

It looks like some critters are already enjoying these tasty blooms.

 

Like the yellow coneflowers I featured in my last Wildflower Wednesday post, these were purchased last year at a prairie plant sale, but didn't bloom until this year.  Either they needed two years of growth to bloom, or the wet conditions this summer were ideal for them.  The native Sneezeweeds are attractive to all kinds of bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, and beetles and provide nectar for them in the autumn. While they are not as showy as the Helenium hybrids I've always meant to plant, I do love these perky yellow blooms that fit in nicely with the yellow coneflowers and Rudbeckias. 

These are definitely a keeper!

 

Wildflower Wednesday is hosted the fourth Wednesday of every month by Gail of Clay and Limestone.  Thanks, Gail, for always helping me to learn something new about native plants!