September 2013 GBBD: I love the rough and tumble wildflowers of early Autumn!

 

It's rough and tumble wildflower time in my garden. The take care of themselves Autumn beauties are beginning to shine.

Verbesina virginica

Rough and tumble wildflowers are simple wildflowers most with no known pedigree, that bloom their hearts out and require the easiest of care.

Helenium autumnale

 Some even resent fertile, rich soil and many aren't even on a list to be hybridized, even if they should be!

unknown Solidago

Familiarity has never bred contempt when it comes to wildflowers. In fact, the more I see them, the more I appreciate their charms.

Vernonia altissima

But, they are so much more than pretty faces. 

Salvia azurea

Each one of these darlings provides more pollen and nectar return on investment than many other flowers combined.

Conoclinium coelestinum

My rough and tumble natives are landing pads of deliciousness for butterflies, bees, wasps and moths.

Symphyotrichum novae-angliae

Common plants like the Ex-asters bloom just in time for the late arriving pollinators which are making a mad dash to collect as much nectar and pollen for their last brood.

Coreopsis tripteris

Rough and tumble wildflowers are late blooming magnets for all kinds of insects, including some insects that are themselves food for spiders, birds and other insect eating critters.

Lobelia cardinalis

The provide food for migrating birds and they all make me smile.

Physostegia virginiana

 I have a special place in my heart for these wild and rough looking beauties that are often found growing in meadows, prairies and roadside ditches. I appreciate plants that haven't had their best characteristics bred out of them. They're beautiful, they're doing the job nature intended them to do, make a lot of nectar and pollen and bloom for a long time, exactly when the critters need both.

Lobelia siphilitica

They're perfect for this time of year, perfect for the resident critters and perfect for this garden.

xoxogail


It's September 15 and you know what that means! Garden bloggers all over the blogasphere are celebrating Bloom Day. You can see more gardens then you can imagine in one day if you stop by Carol's blog, May Dreams Gardens to take the linky magic carpet ride.

First flower is Ex-aster S patens

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.

What's Noshing At Clay and Limestone

Pennsylvania Leatherwing on Sneezeweed/Helenium autumnale

I've a new critter in the garden~This is the first Clay and Limestone  sighting for this super duper cool Halloween colored soldier beetle.  Am I ever glad I checked this critter out before dispatching it to bug Hades.   Pennsylvania Leatherwings are highly desirable  biological control agents.  Simply stated~they are good bugs that eat bad bugs!

A highly beneficial rascal to have around the garden.

Don't you think it resembles a Lightening Bug (LB)?  I did, and that helped me discover  its identity.  Describing what it looked like and  on which flowers it was feeding  took me almost immediately to Pennsylvania Leatherwings. What a cool critter.   It's no accident that the PLB resembles its close relative the firefly/Lightening Bug.  Clever Mother Nature helps critters mimic poisonous look-a-likes and survive  predators.  No smart bird or wasp wants to eat anything that resembles a  firefly with their poisonous blood that oozes from the base of their wing covers.   On the other hand~our orange hero is a tasty treat  for birds, bats, spiders, ground beetles, and other small predators.

Soldier Beetles and Green Metallic Bee on Verbisina virginica

 Prof Michael Raupp wrote that,  "Like other members of this clan, soldier beetles are natural born killers in both adult and juvenile stages and are highly beneficial rascals to have around the garden." (source) The adult Pennsylvania Leatherwings are especially important predators of aphids and their larva consumes grasshopper eggs, aphids, small beetles, caterpillars and other soft bodied insects, most of which are pests.  Go here  and here for more on their life cycle.  I sure hope they lay eggs in the soil in my garden~I've had a plague of  grasshoppers this year,  so there will be lots of their eggs  for them to nosh on!

A pest consuming machine

The Pennsylvania Leatherwing may be a  pest consuming machine but, they play an important role in pollinating native plants like  Helenium autumnale/Sneezeweed,  Verbesina virginica/Frostweed  and other native plants in  natural areas and our gardens.

They supplement their diet with pollen and nectar

I am tickled pink to find these beneficial insects living in the garden and dining on the natives that were added to the menu with this in mind. Later this month when the Goldenrod Blooms they may stop by to nosh on its golden  pollen.  When that happens I'll call them by their other common name: Goldenrod Soldier Beetle.

They're also  Very Important Pollinators

What's noshing in your garden?

xxoogail

Wildflower Wednesday~Nothing To Sneeze About

Helenium autumnale or Common Sneezeweed

There's way too much laughing at the gardener already about this post! I've been bamboozled by a misidentified plant. A little voice said~"Check this plant out before you post!" I listen to those little voices and verified. Good thing or my wildflower loving face would be red! I so wanted to share my big find of the summer, which wasn't a big find after all!

Last winter I shared Frostweed in a post, Have You Seen The Frost Flowers. Ever since I discovered that White Crownbeard has a yellow flowered cousin, v alternifolia, I've been on the lookout for it. I thought I found it earlier this spring at my favorite native plant nursery. Labels can be wrong! Never, ever, ever make assumptions! I was lead astray by those winged stems! Sneezeweed has winged stems, too.

Winged stems on Helen's Flower

As soon as the flower opened, I knew they were Helen's Flower, Helenium autumnale, an entirely different plant. That's not to say that sneezeweed isn't a delightful flower. It really is~

Just look at the lovely yellow face~ How could you find fault with a sweet smiling flower, that's attractive to honeybees, Minor bees, bumble bees, Leaf Cutting bees, wasps, butterflies, bee flies and some beetles. And, for all you gardeners troubled by dear deer~ It's deer proof~ all parts of it being poisonous, so deer aren't supposed to browse it!

Look at that sweet face

I'm hopeful that sneezeweed will find a place among the rough and tumble wildflowers that make their home at Clay and Limestone. I am charmed by this member of the sunflower family with its sweet daisy flowers with toothed drooping rays and that large central disk. They prefer a moist, rich soil, but they've survived all summer here with inconsistent rain and very high temperatures. Almost any of us can grow Sneezeweed~it's native to most of North America~except Alaska. As a native plant lover I want to thank the Europeans for bringing Sneezeweed to our attention. Like many of our most wonderful native plants, Sneezeweed was unknown or ignored until we started seeing them in their gardens.

They're planted in the sunniest spots I have with correopsis, asters, salvia azurea and Tennessee Coneflower. The stems are floppy and next year I'll cut them back in early July~They'll be bushier and look neater. They've just opened, so I'll dead head to keep them blooming, but, leave a few flowers to see if they will reseed. I think they've bloom till frost~just in time for the native ex-asters. Won't they look good together!

One other thing, Helenium autumnale is named sneezeweed because the leaves were dried and made into a snuff by native Americans to induce sneezing to treat a cold, not because they cause hay fever. Sneezeweed is insect pollinated and no pollen is released into the air.

In the meantime, Verbesina alternifolia is going back on the list. Here's what it looks like~

Wingstem

Thanks for stopping by to celebrate Wildflower Wednesday. It's all about sharing wildflowers/native plants no matter where you garden in the blogasphere. It doesn't matter if we sometimes show the same plants. How they grow and thrive in your garden is what matters most.

I hope you join the celebration..It's always the fourth Wednesday of the month!


Gail