Common fleabane is a biennial/short lived perennial that blooms from April through July in my Middle Tennessee garden. It is native throughout much of the US and Canada and is often seen growing in open fields, grassy ares/lawns and the edges of woodlands. While it prefers a moist soil it will adapt to almost any soil type and sets seeds with abandon; thus this
Asteraceae family member is often seen as a weed instead of the ecologically valuable pollinator plant that it is.
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| the flowers are sometimes a lovely pink |
The pollen or nectar of the flowers attracts many kinds of insects, including long-tongued bees, short-tongued bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, skippers, beetles, Carpenter bees, Nomadine Cuckoo bees, Green Metallic bees and other Halictine bees, Eumenine wasps, Tachinid flies, and Thick-Head flies. Caterpillars of the Lynx Flower Moth eat the flowers and seed capsules.(
source)
A crab spider hiding in plain sight is ample evidence that pollinators and other insects visit Fleabane.
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| Each daisy-like flowerhead has 100-300 ray florets that surround a dense head of disk florets |
You can let Fleabane naturalize in your lawn or plant it in your garden. Not one to be afraid of colonizing plants, I let this rough and tumble wildflower seed in the lawnette along with
Lyreleaf sage,
Danthonia spicata and
Entireleaf Western Daisy.
Go ahead, give it a try, you'll make the bees and other pollinators happy and you can always deadhead it before it sets seeds. Bonus~you'll get more blooms!
xoxogail
Gail Eichelberger is a gardener and therapist in Middle Tennessee. She loves wildflowers and native plants and thoroughly enjoys writing about the ones she grows at Clay and Limestone. She reminds all that the words and images are the property of the author and cannot be used without written permission.
