Lots of Yellow and Some Blue

Agastache foeniculum, Anise hyssop; yummy smell, if you like black licorice !

Liatris aspera, Button Blazing Star; blooming from the top down, just like a Blazing Star

Rudbeckia laciniata, Wild Golden Glow

Rudbeckia fulgida, Orange Coneflower, but not 'Goldsturm'........striking !

Ratibida pinnata, Yellow, or Gray-Headed Coneflower, Hula skirts !

Native Plant Sale 8.22 & 23

Butterfly Weed Asclepias tuberosa

I will have a plant sale of Native Minnesota/Midwestern plants this coming weekend, Saturday & Sunday August 22 & 23 from 10 am to 1 pm in my yard in Minneapolis. E-mail me for my address if you want to take a look.

The plants are growing in 2" or 4" pots. The 2" pots will be $2.00 each and the 4" will be $3.00 each. If you buy a whole flat of plants (18 x 4" or 36 x 2" in a flat) you can take them away for just $50.00.

Here's a list of all the plants available: (note both the common and botanical names for each plant; if you search the web for details about any of them, be sure to use the botanical name as it will get you more precise results)

Here are the plants followed by the number of each (in no particular order):

Showy Tick Trefoil Desmodium canadense-- 32

Sweet Joe Pye Weed Eupatorium purpureum --10

Jacob's Ladder Polemonium reptans-- 20

Culver's Root Veronicastrum virginicum-- 12

New England Aster Aster novae angliae-- 16

Ninebark Physocarpus opulifolius (shrub)-- 24

Ground Plum Astragalus crassicarpus-- 12

Missouri Evening Primrose Oenothera macrocarpa-- 8

Prairie Blazing Star Liatris pychnostachya-- 12

Purple Prairie Clover Petalostemum purpureum

aka Dalea purpurea-- 9

Bottle Gentian Gentiana andrewsii-- 20

Purple Milkweed Asclepias purpurascens-- 20

Butterfly Weed Asclepias tuberosa-- 28

Asclepias ??? Unknown spp milkweed from Hudson, WI-- 24

Blue Wild Indigo Baptisia australis-- 5

Lead Plant Amorpha canescans-- 6

Prairie Coreopsis Coreopsis palmata-- 10

If you want to dig up pictures and info about these and other species, I'll recommend 2 places here that have a wealth of information:

First is Prairie Moon Nursery in Winona, MN;

and the other is the Native Plant Information Network at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, TX.

I'll be happy to see you this weekend ! Stop by just to take a look at my yard if you like...

Again, e-mail me for my address......Thanks, Scott.

Leadplant and Milkweed

This is a running milkweed, either Asclepias Syriaca, Common Milkweed, or Asclepias speciosa, Showy Milkweed, I've forgotten which.

Leadplant, Amorpha canescens develops a very deep taproot and can become over 4 feet tall with woody stems.

Grasses

On the top is Elymus canadensis, Canada Wild Rye, and the bottom picture is Bottle Brush Grass, Hystrix patula. Both can handle full or part sun and are easy to grow from seed.

More Blooms

This is the Pale Purple Coneflower, Echinacea pallida, whose reflexed ray flowers I can't resist, though it's native to places south of Minnesota. In the foreground are leaves of Astragalus canadensis, Canada Milk Vetch, just preparing to bloom now on July 7th. In the background is the lively Prairie Sage, Artemisia ludoviciana. This one runs heartily, so plant a little and watch it cavort ! I find that any native plant that runs like this is easy enough controlled by pulling the runners, but of course if you mistakenly planted alot of it, well, you might be busy for awhile each season. Many milkweeds run like this also, but the Butterfly Weed is very well behaved, just expanding into a nice clump.

Recent Blooms

on the left is Purple Prairie Clover, Petalostemum purpureum, aka Dalea purpurea. Easy to grow from seed, pollinators love it, and it's really pretty.

Butterfly Weed, Asclepias tuberosa and Narrow-Leaved Coneflower, Echinacea angustifolia, the only Purple Coneflower that is native to Minnesota. Neither Echinacea Purpurea or Echinacea pallida; Purple Coneflower, or Pale Purple Coneflower are native to the state, just the diminutive Narrow-Leaved, which hardly reaches 18" in height, and whose ray petals tend to to remain much more horizontal to the disc.

Cottonwoods belong by the River

I have been planting flats of 2" plug pots with native seeds since May 25, and some of them are sprouting. However, I have a couple decent sized (maybe 40 plus feet) Cottonwood trees within 2 houses of mine, and they started blowing their seeds around in the past week or so. They drop so much seed with its attendant fluff that it piles up in drifts like snow ! It also settles in my plug pots, and because I am diligently watering them in this droughty Spring that we're enduring here in central Minnesota, the seeds are sprouting within 4 or 5 days of settling. And this is before some of my natives sprout. So, in some cases it becomes confusing as to what might be a Cottonwood seedling and what might be a Shooting Star or an Aster seedling. In one little pot there are as many as 15 or 20 Cottonwood seedlings. Nature is abundant in this seeding thing, for certain. Now Cottonwood trees are native Minnesota plants, I will admit. But a tree this large and messy, like the fast growing but ungainly native Silver Maple, might better be left in something more near it's native habitat, which would be a river bottom, not an urban back yard. I spent 20 minutes today picking the seedlings out of just one flat of pots, and am hoping I didn't also eradicate the unsprouted desirables I planted. I will employ some kind of protective barrier for my flats next planting season, possibly window screening stretched over them to keep the Cottonwood seeds impotent. I have been using frames of 1 x 6 or 8 inch boards covered with chicken wire to foil the disruptive digging of the grey squirrels for a couple years and may augment this with the window screening. I'll post a few pictures soon to illustrate some of my struggles and solutions with these issues.