Native Plant Firsts....and Lasts

This past month I have celebrated several firsts!  After trying for a number of years I finally brought along several native plants from seed to maturity.

American Lady butterfly may be laying eggs on its host plant?

The American Lady is distinguished from
the similar Painted Lady butterfly by the
colored swath on the outside of its wings 

The first plant is Pearly Everlasting, Anaphalis margaritacea.  I have been able to get these to germinate well, but they languished after transplanting into the garden.  I had success last year by planting them into the bark mulch surrounding the raised vegetable beds.  I think the rather sterile conditions there favored this plant that is common to 'old field' conditions.  (I have had similar disappointments with a related plant Sweet Everlasting, Pseudognaphalium obtussifolium).  The double bonus was that, not only did I get blossoms this year, the plant was visited by an American Lady butterfly (Vanessa virginiensis).  Pearly Everlasting is a larval host for that species of butterfly.











The second first, as it were, was having the Woodland Sunflower, Helianthus divaricatus, come into bloom under my Norway Maple.  These plants were not particularly difficult to grow, it just took a long time to find a commercial seed source.  These did take a year in the ground to get established before sending up blooms this summer.

Brown-eyed Susan growing 3-4' tall in a sunny flower bed.

The Brown-eyed Susan, Rudbeckia triloba, was easier to find as seed but they were more difficult to get to germinate.  Moist stratification in soil-less mix for 60 days gave better results than using damp sand for a similar time.  (Since two methods were tried in successive years, cold storage for a year may have helped as well.)  These Rudbeckia did take a year to get established before blooming.  I have them growing in both sun and shade (Norway Maple), and in a pot; they are all doing well.

The easiest plant to bring along was the Partridge Pea, Chamaecrista fasciculata.  This annual germinated well after moist stratification and treatment with a bacterial innoculum that gives this legume its nitrogen fixing capability.  I have these growing in dry sunny to partly sunny locations, and they are all doing well.  This plant may be a solution to a road-side bed that I have been working with.  They tolerate dry road-side conditions and as an annual, they should be resistant to the effects of snow plows!

The yellow Partridge Pea here is holding its own with the
crab grass and inhospitable conditions

While not a first, we were thrilled to see this Eastern Tiger Swallowtail drop by our deck plantings yesterday and I wanted to share this action shot.    This butterfly was the first native insect I've seen to go after the Lantana and totally ignore the Mealy-cup Sage.

The reason that all of these firsts are also 'Lasts' for me is that we are in the process of moving south, down to Maryland.  This is an exciting move for us.  We will be getting quite a bit more land.  There will be room for larger native plant gardens and hopefully the opportunity to do some limited production of underutilized native plants that I can used in my design business.  So as we go through this transition I will be blogging about my new environs, the native plant communities there and the new challenges to establishing new plantings in the woods.

North American Natives for a Patio Container

Last year I had spotty results using the combination of Mealy-cup Sage (Salvia farinacea), Phlox drummondii, and Bidens ferulifolia to do a Native-species planting box scheme using primary colors.  The sage performed well, but the Phlox didn't transplant well and the Bidens bloomed in cycles, so I rarely had all three color blooming at once.  This year I stuck with the Salvia (cultivar 'Victoria Blue') as my tall plant and used a Lantana cultivar 'Bandana-Rose Improved' as the 'spiller' and Zinnias from the 'Profusion' series as 'fillers.'

This Lantana starts out yellow and ages to a pinkish-red.
The Zinnias had not bloomed yet.

In this flower box I also got a surprize.  A Drummond Phlox reseeded itself and has grown much better than the ones I grew indoors last year.  This past winter was mild enough to allow the seeds of this Texas species to overwinter in the flower box.  I also got a bunch of Salvia reseeding themselves as well.  This was great, I got bonus plants for free!

Native species that I have found to work well in a sunny flower box are native to Mexico and the Southwest US.  The hot and often dry conditions encountered in these containers is not unlike their native environment.  At first, I hesitated to use the Zinnias.  They have been highly bred and manipulated, but then I remembered the these plants actually have their origins in the North America, Mexico to be more specific.  The ones you see in the garden centers have been horticulturally improved for features like color, long bloom and resistance to powdery mildew, to name a few.

The 'Profusion Series' are hybrids of Zinnia elegans (the common tall Zinnia) and Z. angustifolia (Narrow-leaf Zinnia).  They tend to be about a foot tall with 1.5 inch flowers in a wide variety of colors that are supposed to bloom all summer.  I am using the cherry- and the white-flowered cultivars.  So far the cherry-form matured more quickly and is a little larger than the white-flowered form.

In checking out the progress of this Zinnia the first thing I noticed was the intricacy of the flower bud.  Maybe all Zinnia buds look like this, but this is the first time I noticed.  So now I'll watch and see if these Zinnias keeps pace with their neighbors.

I was happy to see that this cultivar still has fertile flowers
 - a bonus for the pollinators.

In another sunny area a random selection of blooms caught my eye.  Here the magenta-colored Wine-cups (Callirhoe involucrata) have encroached on a new planting of 'Apricot Sparkles' Day lily (yes, not everything I have is native).  To these, some self-seeded Wild petunias (Ruellia humilis) have also popped up.  I don't think I would have planned on this color combination, but the three taken together work for me.

I don't think the Daylily and the pale lavender Petunia would work
together if it weren't for the intense color of the  Wine-cups.

Natives in Pots

There are many reasons to grow outdoor plants in containers. You may not have space in the ground, or they can be used as decorations on a deck or patio, or you may just want to bring the plants closer to where the people are. The main reason I have been growing native plants in pots is that I do not have the right growing conditions in the ground to raise the the plants I want from seed. This is particularly the case for annuals from some of the hotter parts of the country.

Here are some of the plants that I am growing this year. Lantana, Lantana camara, is technically a North American native, since its native range includes Mexico and Puerto Rico. It behaves well as a bedding or potted plant in colder climates, but it is invasive in the warmer parts of the US, particularly Florida and Texas. I really love the red-orange-yellow multi-colored flowers and long blooming period.  These I bought from a nursery and mixed in with other classic annuals like the Lobelia, shown here.  The rest of the annuals I have grown from seed.

While on a trip to Austin, TX, I picked up seeds for Drummond phlox, Phlox drummondii, and the annual Indian Blanket, Gaillardia pulchella, at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. These appeared to be species plants and not any crazy cultivars. So far the Phlox has made it to bloom, with its scarlet red flower. The Indian blanket is just a week or so away. Another Texas native I have growing in pots and in the ground is Scarlet Sage, Salvia coccinea. None of these plants really started growing until the temps here got well into the 80’s.

I was really happy to see that some seed from the Beach Sunflower, Helianthus debilis ‘Pan’, that I grew last year had germinated in the same pot. Native to the Texas coast, this species has spread up the East Coast all the way to Maine. Here it is in bloom last year in the same pot. I have also grown Bearded Beggarticks (Bidens aristosa) in pots. Given half a chance, this eastern native reseeds itself readily.

Some native annuals that I had in pots last year are Devil’s Claw (Proboscidea louisianica), Yellowdicks (Helenium amarum ‘Dakota Gold’), and Bird’s Eye Gilia (Gilia tricolor).

The native perennial that I have in a pot is the Crimson-eyed Rosemallow, Hibiscus moscheutos, that I bought from the New England Wildflower Society. While it is native to New England, I just don’t have the sunny moist site it would like to keep it in. I over-wintered this in its pot by storing in a plastic bag with salt marsh hay in an unheated garage. It looks pretty happy so far. The blooms are expected in late summer.