Plants for Hummingbirds
Showing 81–84 of 89 results
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Silene virginica Fire pink Z 4-8 Short-lived perennial, 2-3 years
Real red, hence the name Fire (not pink in color), flowers of five notched petals flaring out from a tube, blooms late spring and early summer. Named “pink” because it is botanically in the family known as Pinks, Dianthus.
Real red, hence the name Fire (not pink in color), flowers of five notched petals flaring out from a tube, blooms late spring and early summer. Named “pink” because it is botanically in the family known as Pinks, Dianthus.
Size: 12-18” x 9-18”
Care: shade in moist well-drained to well-drained soil.
Native: nearly entire eastern half of No. America. Endangered species in WI.
Wildlife Value: attracts hummingbirds.1st collected by John Banister (1654-1692) Anglican minister who searched and found many plants in the Virginia colony, losing his life when he was accidentally shot along the Roanoke River while collecting plants.
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Spigelia marilandica Carolina pink, Woodland pinkroot Z 5-9
Stems topped with showy red tubes and fireworks-like yellow, five-pointed stars flare atop the tubes in late spring to early summer and later in the north. Deadhead for rebloom
Stems topped with showy red tubes and fireworks-like yellow, five-pointed stars flare atop the tubes in late spring to early summer and later in the north. Deadhead for rebloom
Size: 12-24” x 6-18”
Care: part to full shade in most well-drained soil, tolerates wet soil
Native: NJ to Fl west to TX
Wildlife Value: nectar for hummingbirds; deer resistant
Awards: 2011 Theodore Klein Plant Award WinnerCherokee used this to purge parasites from intestines. In garden by 1753. Philip Miller’s Dictionary “the plant “is esteemed as the best medicine (in North America) yet known for the worms.” (1768) According to Jacob Bigelow in American Medical Botany, 1817 one doctor used it as a purgative and another as a narcotic.
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Sporobolus heterolepsis Prairie dropseed Zone 3 – 9
Mound of graceful thinnest of grass blades
The description in the Chiltern Seeds catalog cannot be improved: “This is the most elegant and refined of the North American prairie grasses …the finest texture composed of the thinnest of thin, thread-like, glossy green blades,.. in autumn turning deep orange before fading to a light copper for the winter. In late summer the plants bear, on very slender stalks high above the foliage, unbelievably delicate, graceful flower panicles, excellent for cutting.”
Size: 2’ x 2’
Care: Full sun in well-drained soil
Native: from Canada in the north to Texas in the south, Wisconsin nativeSporobolos is Greek from sporo meaning seed and ballein meaning to cast forth because the seed readily falls from the flower (or dropseed, the common name). Ojibwa “Medicine Society” used roots to cure sores & “remove bile.”
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Stachys minima syn. Stachys spathulata Dwarf betony Z 5-9
Emerging from a rosette of charming crinkly leaves, spikes of pink-purple trumpets bloom generously from June – July.
Emerging from a rosette of charming crinkly leaves, spikes of pink-purple trumpets bloom generously from June – July.
Size: 2-6” x 15-18”
Care: sun to part shade in well-drained to moist well-drained soil
Native: South Africa
Wildlife Value: Walnut tolerant, deer resistant, hummingbird plantStachys is an old Greek word meaning “spike.” This species collected from the wild before 1834.
