Pollinators and Late Summer Blooming Flowers

Cardinal Flower and friend

It's late summer and many gardens are winding down. Any blooming plants are especially appreciated for their beauty and the nectar and pollen they provide for resident and visiting pollinators. Each year I add more plants that fill the void until the big blue, gold and purple fall show. Here are a few that continue to make me smile.

Cardinal Flower, aka, Lobelia siphilitica is a gorgeous plant that always has skippers, butterflies, bumbles, carpenter bees and the tiniest little pollinators visiting it.

It blooms bottom up and the color is more lilac/purple then blue! It's planted in semi-shade and needs a good gulp of water in this extreme weather. It would be happiest in a constantly moist soil, but, that's not going to happen at Clay and Limestone. Once established, it can take short periods of drought. Red Cardinal Flower bloomed earlier and was the host for hummers.

Eupatorium coelestinum or Conoclinium coelestinum ~Whatever name you prefer, it's another late blooming native that I can't garden without. Nature gave me this pretty and I thank her every August when the cooling lilac blue against the pale green foliage is a spot of lush in my other wise dry garden. This plant is loved by bees, butterflies (especially Skippers and Swallowtails) and insects that Bluebirds, Orioles and warblers like to munch on~

Vernonia gigantea is one of my favorite of the late summer rough and tumble wildflowers that make a home in the garden. They make gardening at this time a year a pleasure.

Ironweed is the common name for this beauty. It's another native that loves wet feet and grows at Clay and Limestone despite the dry clay soil each summer. This is not a xeric plant, so don't plant it unless you have a low spot that collects rain water or plan on making sure you can meet its cultural needs. Bees, butterflies, skippers, and various bee flies seek out the nectar and pollen. Deer do not!

I'm not alone in my admiration of the Susans! Skippers, small butterflies, bees, bees and more bees love them, too. Rudbeckia hirta is the host plant for the Silvery Checkerspot (source) and several other caterpillary critters. R fulgida , R subtomentosa, R laciniata and R triloba are also residents of the garden.

Silphium perfoliatum. Just look at that bloom and its pollinator visitors! Need I say more about why I grow this pushy native! Cup Plant has visitors from sun up to sun down! Not only is it a pollinator magnet~it's been in bloom since August 1.

It's one of the tallest flowering plants in the garden, but, wants to lean over after a heavy rain storm~Never to stand up again. I discovered that you can cut it back in June, like tall asters, and it will flower just a tad latter and much shorter! But, nothing can stop it's attractiveness to bumbles, small bees, wasps, butterflies, skippers and birds who come to eat the seeds early in the fall.

Helenium autumnale or Common Sneezeweed is a cutie pie plant that's relatively new to the garden. It's putting on a big flowery show but, with the droughty conditions it's really wimping out and flopping all over the place. So far that hasn't stopped the critters from visiting it, but, it may be moved to a spot where it can get support to hold it up! What I wanna know is, "Who planted this plant in the front of the garden where it looks messy and sloppy and blocks the amsonia?!"

Yes, even a few exotics make me smile. Anemone × hybrida 'September Charm' (Japanese anemone).


xxoogail

PS I know, I've written this before~ If you want to attract bees and other pollinators to your garden:

• plant large swathes of pollinator friendly, nectar and pollen producers.
• plant host plants~don't stop at nectar and pollen plants
• plan for bloom from late spring to early winter
• bee sure to include water
• provide nesting sites for a variety of visitors: decaying logs, even special bee houses and leave some bare ground (ix-nay on the plastic landscape cloth)
• Never, ever, ever, ever, ever use pesticides in your garden. I mean never. Seriously....never.

In case you want to read earlier pollinator posts~

Now Is The Time To Bee-gin Thinking About Bees ( here)
This Is The Place To Bee ( here)
If You Could Plant Only One Plant In Your Garden~Don't (here)
Must Bee The Season of The Witch (here)
Go Bare In Your Garden (here)
We can't All Be Pretty Pollinators (here)
Eye, Eye Skipper, Big Eyed Pollinators (here)
What's In Your Garden (here)
Royalty In The Garden~Monarch Butterfly (here)
Carpenter Bees (here)
Got Wildflowers?(here)
It's Spring and A Gardener's Thoughts Are On Pollinators (here)
The Wildflower and The Bee (here)
A Few Good Reasons To Plant Milkweek (here)
Got Shade? You Can Have Pollinators ( (here)
A Pollinator friendly Shrub (here)
Big Goings On at C and L (here)

Other bee posts you might want to read~

Count Yourself Lucky To Have Hoverflies (here)
Bumblebee Hotel (here)
Still Taking Care Of Bzzness (here)
My Sweet Embraceable You (here)

Bee clip art (here)

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