Native To Know: Cardinal Flower, Lobelia Cardinalis

Photo Courtesy of: BigDan

The Cardinal Flower is a bright, brassy North American native plant that grows up to 3 or 4 feet tall, and sports spiked torches of blood red blossoms!  In the last several years this Lobelia has gained popularity in garden centers, and home landscaping, but it’s use around the house can go much farther than just as the back row of a wildflower bed.

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Native To Know: Columbine

This native to know is a gorgeous bloomer with unique flowers unlike anything else you’ll find. A few varieties of the Aquilegia family are able to withstand full sun, but they are better known as shade loving plants, and make great additions to those hard to fill spots in low lit areas.

What You’ll Love:

• Columbine are easy care perennials, and self seeders.
• They are April and early May bloomers, that can be encouraged into flowering through the summer by plucking off the spent blooms.
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Red Osier Dogwood; ‘Red Twig’

We all like to have winter color, and there’s nothing more Christmas-y than the bright red branches of the Red Osier Dogwood.  This great North American native bush has beautiful architectural quality to it, and the crisp winter sun will literally glow off of it’s  branches.

This great native alternative works well in soggy areas, and drainage gardens, and makes a bright addition to pond banks.

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How To: Harvest Seeds From Purple Coneflowers

A Guerrilla Gardening becomes more popular, so does ‘Guerrilla Harvesting,’ a new trend where gardeners, dog walkers, and generally snoopy people, pinch flowers from other people’s gardens to harvest the seeds for their mischievous purposes!

I won’t ask you where you get your flower heads from, but I am more than happy to help your navigate your way through them to collect your favorite seeds.  Today I’ll help you harvest Purple Coneflower seeds. (more…)

Native To Know: Penstemon ‘Beard Tongue’

Native plants are notoriously tolerant of both the wet spring weather, and the droughts that stretch through the North American summer months, and Beard Tongue (Penstemon) is an airy example of drought tolerance that has the appearance of an English garden staple.

Penstemon comes in hundred of cultivars, but the original native varieties generally are sold under the name “Beard Tongue.” A full or partial sun perennial, this plant is easily grown from seed, or as a live plant.  It does well in naturalized areas near woodlines, or in meadow since it doesn’t need too much water to thrive, and fits in well with other formal garden plants like Lavender, Roses, Daisies, and Purple Coneflowers.

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Native To Know: The Oregon Grape Holly

Originally gaining popularity with New Englanders after the Lewis and Clark expedition brought seeds back from the Pacific Northwest, this little known plant will dazzle you with it’s unusual shape and year round color and interest.

What You’ll Love:

• Blooms in January! The Mahonia holds on to it’s large clusters of yellow blooms, from January through March or April, adding welcome color to the winter garden.
• In the summer and fall the former yellow flowers become heavy draping fruit clusters in bright blue and purple hues.
• This is a great “go anywhere” shrub, thriving in full sun to heavy shade.
• This plant is almost completely immune to all pest and disease problems, and is one of the top five plants that botanical societies recommend to plant in areas with known Crown Gall infestation, due to its imperviousness to the bacterium.

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Native Landscaping Plant To Know: River Birch

The River Birch is a wonderful native North American Tree that won widespread recognition in 2002 as the “Tree of the Year” from several several national Arborist societies.  Easily found now in most local nurseries, this riverbed native is now a favorite as a street tree in urban settings because of it’s hardy nature, and drought tolerance.  River Birch are fast growing trees, that max out in height at about 50-70 feet tall over the course of about twenty years.  They provide excellent shade in the summer and fall months, and beautiful peeling bark through the winter that varies in shade from red, to peach, to purple.  

 What You’ll Love:  

This tree is remarkably resistant to Borer insects, and a wide variety of pests and diseases.  The peeling bark of the tree lends itself to softening the appearance of urban structures, and can add a woodsy appeal to a variety of yards. 

What It Gives Back To You And Your Yard:

River Birch is an excellent choice for areas that need erosion controlling plants, be it a hillside, or a stream bed area. These thrive in drainage swales, and moist areas on your property that may drowned or be too boggy down other garden plants. If you are looking for a fast growing shade tree this also makes a great choice, and can help you cut down those summer cooling bills when planted around a house.

What It Does For The Environment:

Aside from being a “greener” ecological alternative to foreign bred plants, this tree  provides food for deer, who eat low growing foliage, while the seeds of the plant attract songbirds.

For a great, easy care tree for your yard or local park, see if the River Birch will meet your needs, and you will be amazed at all it can give back to you.

Native Landscaping Plant To Know: Washington Hawthorn

I’m planning some additions in my yard and garden for the spring, and this plant tops the list of prospectives for a bare area near my back fence. I’m familiar with this plant through my work in landscaping and habitat restoration, and I’ve decided that this is the year to add more native plant islands to my yard – partly out of a desire to add to the nonexistent habitat in my area, but mostly driven by my desire to bribe birds other than House Sparrows and Pigeons to my yard!

The Washington Hawthorn is another one of the plants on my “bullet-proof” list, that I recommend to everyone, no matter how green their thumb!  A native North American tree growing naturally from the North East to the Mississippi River, it is best used as a landscaping tree (don’t bother trying to tame it into a shrub), and provides a full four seasons of color, or fruit.

What You’ll Love:

• This is resistant to many diseases.
• It thrives in full sun exposure, partial sun, or total shade areas.
• It can be planted in wet areas, or dry areas.
• They grow a maximum of 20 feet tall, and fits in a small, or moderately size yard very nicely.
• Is a great plant to have on hand for floral arrangements, and holiday crafts.

What It Gives Back To You And Your Yard:

• Spring: The tree is covered in delicate blooms.
• Summer: Full leafy foliage, and the development of berries.
• Fall: The foliage turns bright colors for the fall before dropping and leaving the fully grown berries exposed.
• Winter: The berries remain on the tree all winter long, and add interest in your planting beds, looking especially pretty in the ice and snow.  Songbirds especially will use this tree as a winter food source, and you can use it for decoration since boughs of the branches can be trimmed off to add to Holiday floral arrangements, hurricane lamp displays, or wreaths for your front door.

What It Does For The Environment:

• Cleans the air,and processes CO2
• Provides food, and shelter for birds and small mammals. 
• Rebuilds native habitat, and offsets the need for foreign ornamental plants that can harm the local ecosystem.

Poke Weed: To Eat or Not to Eat, that is the Question!

The past two months were unusually dry for the second year in a row in my area.  Today periodic rain showers were a refreshing change of pace and a welcome sign to me that Fall is coming!

I’m currently cooped up indoors recovering after a minor surgery, but I made my way outdoors when the first ray of sunlight peeped through the clouds, to take pictures and look around.  I found a stray Poke Weed that had taken up residence under the deck stairs, and was struck at how pretty even that looked after the rain. With the right mindset anything can be beautiful!  Covered in rain drops those berries look inviting to even me, although I am pretty sure they are not what the doctor ordered!

Can You Eat Poke Weed?

I was reminded of a lecture that one of my professors gave me years ago.  He told the class that the leaves of a young Poke Weed are edible and safe to humans, as long as the plant is not producing fruit or flowers. He explained that once reproductive cycle begins, the plant, and later berries are toxic for human consumption, and that the window of opportunity around which the plant is edible can vary, thereby making it a questionable snack for the unwary. I chuckled when I remembered that random fact and tucked it back into the recesses of my brain reserved only for life-or-death survival tips likely to benefit me in the event of nuclear holocaust. Should I ever be eking out a living with nomadic tribes in the hills of Tennessee, I’ll happily volunteer to fix a poke weed salad if the others go club dinner over the head, but short of those extreme circumstances, I’ll stick with Romaine Lettuce!

With the potential risk involved, I think I’ll leave the plant and its berries to the local wildlife for now, and hope they return the favor by dropping their berry dyed “calling cards” on the neighbor’s cars and not mine! But just in case you ever do find yourself desperate, here are some hints to help you identify Poke Weed.

How to Identify Poke Weed

Pokeweed often grows rapidly in one season up to a height of 10 feet.  Generally first appearing in late spring, they prefer hearty soil, and a little moisture, and have rather fleshy stems that are easily broken, and pink, with the color deepening at the time of fruiting.  Pokeweed flowers from July to September, and produces self-pollinated fruit anywhere from late summer to mid-fall.  The flowers of the plant grow at the ends of the branches, in clusters of white flowers that are followed by clusters of dark blue or purple berries.  The berries produce a deep magenta dye that is often impossible to remove from clothing.  (Belated apologies to my mother, who made many heroic efforts against set-in stains following childhood “combat” missions at the park with the neighborhood kids)

What do you think: Is there an odd plant that you have been told could be a survival-only, Bear Grylls-style, eat only as a last resort, food source?

Saying Goodbye to My Summer Favorite: Coneflower

Summer is almost officially over, but the heat is still here.  Although fall is my hands down favorite season, it means that my favorite garden flower, the Purple Coneflower, will be on it’s way “out” soon.  I’ve been trimming back my cluster of the pink and purple blooms a lot these past two weeks, in the hopes that I can coax another wave or two of flowers forth, before they begin to go dormant.

This year I went a little crazy with my  Coneflowers, dividing the clumps in early June after they had only been established for one year, and probably could have benefited from another year to plump up more.  Luckily, the native plants seem almost unkillable in my yard, bouncing back from one issue after another and thriving just the same.  They are an ever popular plant with the butterfly, bee, and Goldfinch crowd, who I attempt to lure into my city garden every year, with great success.  How wildlife finds my yard, sandwiched like it is between Industrial buildings, and interstate 95 in a busy city, I’ll never understand, but I am always glad they make the trip to find me!

This past spring, the groundhog that lives under my back porch kicked off the growing season by foraging through my Coneflowers and eating them back almost to the ground, which posed a challenge to my goal of 2008 to “live and let live” in my yard.  After weighing my options, and the ethics of dragging the “hog” out from under my proch, rubbing his nose in what was left of my flowers, and punting his squeaky behind across the Daylilly bed, I opted to take the heigher road, if only to save my neighbors from the spectacle that would have been! “Confucious,” as I have named the animal, luckily pondered the errors of his ways, and has left my favorite plant untouched in the past months, leaving me plenty of flowers for summer arrangements.  He taught me a valuable lesson about Purple Coneflowers though, since his overzealous spring pruning trained the plants to grow to half their usual height, and produce prolific blooms that were mostly hidden under larger flowers and shrubs.

I’m looking forward to next years batch though already, and in the coming weeks I will be able to move the conflowers in my pot designs there into reforestation areas on the property I manage, where the native plant will hopefully thrive, and prove to be useful for the wildlife there.  If the animals I plant the Coneflowers for are even half as appreicative of the early spring foliage as “Confucious” was, I will be expecting Thank You notes on “Smokey the Bear” stationary some time next May.

Your thoughts: Do you have a favorite summer flower or plant that you are going to miss?