I was worried that this might have been the first year that the Hypericums weren't going to put on their hypercolored show for the Wildflower Wednesday Posts in Review Roundup! At the last minute and after two inches of much needed rain their brilliant colors began to brighten my garden. Each fall when I see Hypericum frondosum's brilliant color I wonder why more American gardeners haven't planted them. It's a wonderful Southeastern US native shrub with four seasons of interest and good wildlife value. It's going to have be the first WW star of 2026!
Gardening in the Middle South is
mostly a treat, we have four seasons,
but our winter is mercifully short and spring and late autumn make up
for
the steamy hot summer weather. The last several years have been
especially rough with weather extremes of incredible cold, incredible
droughts and incredible rains...But we gardeners remain positive knowing that
before long the earliest spring ephemerals will break dormancy and the gloriously long bloom of wildflowers will begin.
Here's the Wildflower Wednesday Parade of Stars. Please follow the links to read about our fabulous wildflowers.
Seasons Greetings and Happy New Year. xoxogail
January Wildflower Wednesday: Anemone virginiana
 |
| I love this photo of its winter curls...before it goes all fluffy. |
I
have had a love-hate relationship with a few plants over the years and
Tall Thimbleweed was once one of them. It's been so long since I felt
that way that I am having trouble remembering exactly why. Perhaps it
was its tendency to spread too easily like other Ranunculous/Buttercup family members. But, these days I appreciate all its fine qualities, including its self sowing.
Anemone virginiana aka Tall
Thimbleweed has a long flowering period from early to mid-summer.
In summer the buds are displayed on slender stems above clusters of
attractive lobed leaves that are clustered in a whorl halfway up the
stem. The small white spring blooming flowers have
five petal-like sepals and greenish-yellow central stamens around a
central dome. Mining bees, small carpenter bees, sweat bees, green sweat
bees and yellow faced bee will be found visiting the unique flower. (source)
February Wildflower Wednesday: A Winter Blooming Treasure-Hamamelis vernalis
I am not shy about sharing photos of my blooming Ozark witch hazel. Nor do I shy away from making it a Wildflower Wednesday star every few years. It it deserves the attention. I wish more people grew this beauty instead of the non-native hybrids that most nurseries sell; especially when you consider that it's a host plant to 69 moths and butterflies.
You'll love its sweet fragrance wafting toward you on a warm winter day (in the 50s). You'll delight in the yellow/orange crepe paper streaming petals that unfurl as the day warms and furl back up when the temperature drops. Walking by this plant in full bloom is a treat with the cool flowers, the wonderful scent and visiting pollinators.
Hamamelis vernalis is a lovely native shrub/small tree that blooms when you have just about given up hope that winter will end and warmth will return to the world. In my Middle Tennessee garden it often begins blooming in mid January and it's not unusual for it to continue blooming all through February and often into March.
March Wildflower Wednesday: Sweet Betsy Time in the Woodland Garden
I love Trillium cuneatum and revel in its spring emergence every year. It's been years since I showcased this beauty and I think it's a perfect little Wildflower Wednesday star.
It was one of the first native plants that I discovered when we moved here many years ago. Long time readers might remember that I built this garden around the native beauties I found all over the wooded edges of my yard. Sweet Betsy was hiding in the wayback backyard under the oak trees and I transplanted it to my new woodland garden. I remember carefully digging around it to get all the rhizome and roots and gently placing it in the garden. They survived and thrived despite my gardening ignorance. Trillium cuneatum typically flowers from early March to mid April. It can be found in rich, mostly upland woods, but, it is especially happy growing on Middle Tennessee's Ordovician limestone soils (neutral to basic soil). Trillium will be happy in your garden, if you give it a rich, moist soil, shade, protect it from browsing critters and keep aggressive perennials from crowding it. They can live for a long time and usually do not flower until they are several years old. It's found growing across Alabama, Georgia, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. Sweet Betsy is a great selection for your shade garden. Plants are hardy, drought-resistant (although they prefer moist soil), somewhat deer proof, and extremely long-lived. |
April Wildflower Wednesday: Maianthemum racemosum
May Wildflower Wednesday: Scutellaria parvula — Small skullcap
Dear readers, There are far too many lovely native wildflowers that are underappreciated or overlooked and Scutellaria parvula is one of them. Even its species name "parvula" means very small and insignificant! It may be small but, it's not insignificant. It's a lovely flower and I hope you are as excited about meeting it as I am to introduce you to our Wildflower Wednesday star.
The flowers of this diminutive beauty are best seen and appreciated close up and that means you gotta get down on your knees to see it's pretty flower face. Trust me when I say, it was so worth the dirty pants to get a close look at this sweet flower. While there I could clearly see the square stems and opposite leaves that are hallmarks of a mint family member.
 |
| Photo Source |
It stands less than a foot high and its tiny flowers are about 1/3 inch long and are located in the leaf axils in the upper third of the plant. The blue/violet tubular corolla flower has fuse petals that form upper and lower lips. The lower lip with its white patch and blue dots is a perfect landing pad for bees.
June Wildflower Wednesday: Dichanthelium clandestinum
When I walk the rolling hills of this neighborhood I can still see pollinator friendly lawns in front of the 1950s ranch houses and the woodland remnants in the hills that surround the neighborhood. The lawns come alive in March when Claytonia virginica/Spring beauties bloom, followed by Salvia lyrata/Lyre leaf sage, Ruellia humilis/wild petunia, Carex/sedges, Danthonia spicata/poverty oat grass and other native witch grasses. I hope that enough of these lawns will be safe from the developers who are bull dozing the trees and the 1950 suburban ranches to the ground in order to build houses that fill almost the entire lot. They have replaced the pollinator friendly lawns with sod...Gone are the spring beauties, gone are the other pollinator plants and gone are the lightening bugs. Ignorance of the value of saving native, trees, grasses and plants are destroying the habitat of pollinators, birds, insects and mammals. That breaks my heart.
But, in my wild garden you will find many of those plants, along with our Wildflower Wednesday Star, Dichanthelium clandestinum. Deer-tongue grass is one of the witch/panic grasses that I've discovered happily growing in damp spots in the garden. The unbranched leaves of early spring caught my eye and made identifying it easier.
Most of the various panic or witch grasses are members of the Panicum or Dichanthelium genus. Many are hard to identify by this author. Deer-tongue grass is easily identified by its attractive silver flower heads that shimmer in the slightest breeze. The clasping leaves give the plant a bamboo like appearance and the foliage turns yellow-brown in autumn. After a hard frost kills the fall stems and leaves, they are replaced by low winter rosettes of basal leaves. The winter rosettes of this plant make a good evergreen groundcover. The root system is rhizomatous and can form colonies. It's attractive and has good wildlife value....so it's a keeper!
July Wildflower Wednesday Anglepod
For years I thought the name of this plant was angelpod!
Although angelpod is not its name, I think you'll agree with me that our Wildflower wednesday star, Gonolobus suberosus, is a cool plant.
It's called anglepod because it's milkweed like fruiting body has sharp angled edges. Gonolobus suberosus is it's botanical name but it has many common names: anglepod milkvine, anglepod milkweed or angular-fruit milkvine. It has leaves that are heart shaped and opposite. The stems, petioles and leaf veins may show purplish shading that fades as the plant ages. The greenish-yellow star shaped flowers occur in a cluster near the top of the plant. It is naturally occurring throughout the southeastern U.S. from Texas to southeastern Kansas to southern Illinois and Indiana to Maryland and southward to Florida. It's a perennial herbaceous vine that prefers habitats like borders, thickets, and open areas within forests. It's native to middle Tennessee and I am not sure how it got in to my garden, but I am glad it's here and gladly accept the gift.
August Wildflower Wednesday: We celebrate a butterfly and its hostplant, Ptelea trifoliata
A dozen years ago I saw my first Giant Swallowtail butterfly when it stopped by to nectar on the wildflowers. It superficially resembled an Eastern Swallowtail while gliding about, but once it settled on the Asclepias tuberosa, it was clear that it was not one of my regular garden visitors. The coloring was wrong and it had an unusually large wing span. I was pretty sure it was a Giant Swallowtail and just as I've read, that first sighting was dazzling!
What a beauty and the 6.3 inch (16cm) wing span makes it the largest North American butterfly.
 |
| Forewing with diagonal band of yellow spots. Tails are edged with black and filled with yellow |
The Giant Swallowtail Butterfly/Papilio cresphontes' flight is a graceful series of strong flaps and long glides. It spends its time on the wing, nectaring or patrolling for mates (if male). I waited patiently for it to stop flitting and pose prettily with wings fully spread, but, it was feasting madly.
It's welcome in most gardens, but, is considered a pest in Florida's citrus growing regions where citrus trees are its chosen host plant. Fortunately there are plenty of parts of the US and Canada where it is welcome, including here in my garden in middle Tennessee.
Back then I wasn't growing its host plant, but several years ago I bought two Hop Tree/Ptelea trifoliata hoping that the next Giant Swallowtail that visited would find a place to lay eggs.
They eat and poop and eat and poop ...a lot!
September: Wildflower Wednesday: Goldenrods
Fall's best landing pads of deliciousness.
- They have been misidentified as the cause of hayfever suffering. They
are not responsible for any allergy symptoms you or I are having this
fall. The tiny grains of wind blown pollen from ragweed is the culprit.
Goldenrod is insect pollinated and the pollen grains are too big to be
blown about. Pass that along please!
- Their tendency to colonize might be one of the main reasons so many gardeners don't plant them in their gardens. Long time readers know I have a love affair with rough and tumble, take care of themselves, colonizing wildflowers and goldenrods are the champion of colonizing wildflowers. Yes, they can be aggressive spreaders, but they are rugged and adaptable. They grow were many wildflowers cannot survive and they can spread quickly where there is no other native plant competition. Those that have been problematic propagate by a rhizomatous/spreading root system that can quickly take over a small garden. So avoid Canada Goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) and Late Goldenrod (Solidago gigantea) two goldenrod species known for their aggressive spread by rhizomes. If you want to plant a goldenrod but fear their nature, look for clump forming cultivated beauties like Solidago 'Solar Cascade', Solidago caesia/Bluestem Goldenrod, Solidago odora, Solidago rugosa 'Fireworks'. My favorite clump former for shade is Solidago flexicaulis/Zigzag Goldenrod.
October Wildflower Wednesday: There Are Wildflowers That Like to Challenge the Boundaries!
At Clay and Limestone we call several of them good friends and Conoclinium coelestinum is one of the best!
 |
| Conoclinium coelestinum |
This rough and tumble wildflower makes gardening on my shallow, too often dry garden soil worth the effort! It's an enthusiastic growers but, I decided years ago that a plant with lovely fuzzy lilac flowers that attracts bumbles, small bees, skippers and was a host plant to several moths was worth my having to pull out a few errant plants.
Yes, given the right conditions it can be an enthusiastic colonizer. It begins blooming in late August (Middle South) and continues through early fall and into October. The fuzzy appearing lilac-blue flowers add a softness to my late summer and fall garden when the Susans, Goldenrods, Cup Plant, Verbesinas, Joe-Pye weeds and Ironweeds are making a large and loud scene. It's especially beautiful when allowed to naturalize and make its own big statement.
November: Wildflower Wednesday: Hamamelis virginiana
Today I am thankful for family, friends and my wildflower garden. I am thankful for time I spend outdoors, for the critters that live and visit my garden, for the last blooming flowers and for the gnats, flies, moths and bees that are out and about on warm days.
I am grateful for all of you who read my Wildflower Wednesday posts and don't mind that I am posting this one on Thanksgiving Day instead of on the fourth Wednesday!
 |
unfurled crepe papery petals on a very warm November afternoon.
Today, I celebrate Hamamelis virginiana our Wildflower Wednesday star. Witch-hazel is a fall flowering understory tree with sweetly fragrant small
yellow flowers. It is native to
woodlands, forest margins and stream banks in eastern North
America (including OK and TX) where it's found growing in moist well
drained soil in sunny to partial shade conditions.    |
There are so many wonderful wildflowers to celebrate, I hope you have a list of your favorites. Here's my secret, all the plants in my habitat are my favorites, but, these wildflowers are incredible plants and if you can give them the growing conditions they need, then consider adding them to your garden. If you garden in middle Tennessee they may be perfect for yours.
I love when you visit and leave comments, especially when you share something about your garden. I hope to see you in 2026 and may your garden give you the joy that mine has given me.
xoxogail
Welcome to Clay and Limestone's Wildflower Wednesday celebration. On the fourth Wednesday of each month I share information about wildflowers and other native plants. Please join in if you like. You can write a blog post or share your favorite wildflower on social media. Remember, it doesn't matter if they are in bloom or not, and, it doesn't matter if we all share the same plants. It's all about celebrating wildflowers.
Gail Eichelberger is a gardener, Tennessee Naturalist and nature writer 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.
