Description
ARCHIVED
Note: This is a plant not currently for sale. This is an archive page preserved for informational use.
Cone-shaped fuzzy yellow flower spikes rise above sparse foliage in April-June
Cone-shaped fuzzy yellow flower spikes rise above sparse foliage in April-June
ARCHIVED
Note: This is a plant not currently for sale. This is an archive page preserved for informational use.
Cone-shaped fuzzy yellow flower spikes rise above sparse foliage in April-June
$12.75/bareroot
BuyMay – June, scarlet and yellow columbines
Size: 24-36”x 12”
Care: part shade in moist well-drained soil
Native: Eastern Canada to Florida, west to New Mexico, Wisconsin native.
Wildlife Value: Rich, sugary nectar important food for ruby-throated hummingbirds. Buntings and finches eat the seeds. Sole food source for columbine duskywing caterpillar.
Seeds are fragrant when crushed, used by Omaha, Ponca and Pawnee as perfume. Pawnee used the plant as a love charm by rubbing pulverized seeds in palm of hand and endeavoring to shake hand of desired person. Crushed seeds also used to cure fever and headaches. Cherokee made a tea for heart trouble. The Iroquois used the plant to cure poisoning and to detect people who were bewitched. Grown by Englishman Tradescant the Elder in 1632. He may have received it from France. Cultivated by Washington & Jefferson.
$12.75/bareroot
BuyOne sided, horizontal, purple tinged spikelets looking like a row of eyelashes, July-October.
Size: 2' x 12"
Care: sun in dry to moist well-drained soil
Native: all US except SE & NW, Wisconsin native
Wildlife Value: Host for caterpillars of Green skipper butterfly. Deer resistant
Awards: Great Plants for Great Plains Grass of the Year 2008
For the Navajo this was a “life medicine” and an antidote to an overdose of “life medicine.” Also used to cure sore throats and cuts – chew on the root and blow on the cut. Navajo girls carried it in the Squaw Dance. Hopi made baskets from this grass. Zuni made brooms & hairbrushes from it. Several tribes ate this & made bedding for their animals from this. Lakota children played a game using this grass: Most of the stems have two flowers on them. Children competed to see who could find the stems with three flowers, like finding a four-leaf clover. First collected for horticulture by Humboldt & Bonpland who scoured Latin America from 1799-1804.
$12.95/bareroot
BuyAiry pink panicles like delicate billowing clouds of seed heads, top clumps of arching slender leaves in mid-summer persisting through winter.
Size: 2-4' x 18"
Care: moist soil in sun to shade
Native: Europe, Asia & No. America, Wisconsin native
Deschampsia named for French botanist Deslongchamps (1774-1849.) Caespitosa means that it grows in clumps. Named and described in 1753.
$12.75/bareroot
BuyMagenta-purple upfacing cups, June – October, non-stop. Wonderful for rock gardens or as a ground cover.
Size: 6" x 12"
Care: Full sun in well-drained soil. Drought tolerant
Native: Missouri to Texas
Although an American prairie native, Callirhoe is named for the daughter of the Greek river god. Teton Dakota burned its dried root for smoke to cure the common cold and aches and pains. First collected by Thomas Nuttall in 1834. Ferry’s 1876 catalog described it as having “a trailing habit, of great beauty.” William Robinson extolled Prairie mallow as “excellent for the rock garden, bearing a continuous crop of showy blossoms from early summer till late in autumn.”