Several years ago, when I checked one of the country’s best nursery catalogs, I found over 50 species and varieties of our native wildflowers listed as common garden flowers.
Other varieties, such as the lovely new tradescantias, were horticultural or hybrids with native wildflower ancestry.
However, there are still many native wildflowers with garden values that are almost unknown.
Of the seven listed below, I had successfully transplanted, while in full bloom, all except the hymenocallis, though it was moved when it was in good growth.
The Adaptability Of Native Plants
The general rule in transplanting wild plants is to give them garden locations that duplicate their conditions in the wild as closely as possible.
Experimenting with a garden surplus built up from seed, cuttings, and divisions — has proved that many species, native to shady spots, will endure the many suns.
Many others, native only to wet swampy places, flourish in the normal border, while others flourish exceedingly when fed rotted manure.
Furthermore, almost all species can be grown in the garden much farther North and south than in their native range.
Shades Of Blue
Amsonia tabernaemontana, a near relative of the periwinkle, is a perennial native to wet places from Pennsylvania to Missouri and southward. In the regular border, it makes a compact clump from a font to a foot and a half in height.
Its lovely, glabrous, willow-like foliage yellows in the Fall and is held late. The inflorescence is phlox-like, ranging from steel blue to periwinkle blue.
At its best, Gentians gubernia, downy gentian, has a dozen stems to the clump instead of the usual single stein.
As with most wildflowers, there is great color variation, but the best downy gentians are a brilliant blue that is more nearly a true blue than any of our other gentians; the flowers are fringed.
And this often leads gardeners who have established this perennial in their gardens to report that they have the fringed gentian.
A clump in bloom is a superb sight on sunny days. However, the flowers remain closed on cloudy days and are easily mistaken for one of the closed gentians.
In Illinois, I found the species in swampy and dry prairies, which flourished for years in a normal garden border. It makes a heavy growth of fleshy roots that must not be injured in transplanting.
The freshly gathered seed starts fairly well in a frame with bottom heat. It is native from. Alaryland to Georgia and westward.
Native Summer-Flowering Bulb
Hymenocallis occidentalism belongs to the same genus as the ismene or Peruvian daffodil; the best plants suggest the ismene in both the fragrance and appearance of the bloom. Poor plants have insignificant flowers made up of narrow segments.
The best plants, grown as great clumps, are difficult to equal in beauty in full midsummer bloom. In its many variations, this spider lily is found wild at the edge of swampy woods from Illinois southward.
It does well in slightly moist, well-shaded garden soil. When grown from seed, it should flower in two to three years.
Little-Known Mertensia
Merteusia paniculate is native around Lake Superior and northward. It has been grown in Chicago parks for nearly 4U years, as a subject for forcing for spring flower shows and as a ground cover in aspen groves and other unfavorable spots where conventional ground covers will not grow. It was bought as M. Virginia and had the same bloom season.
The flower stalks are 2’ to 3’ feet high. The flowers vary from washed-out blue to a rich dark blue; the buds are coral red. When used as a ground cover, the flowering stalks are cut back immediately after blooming—the plant.
Then sends up a thick new growth or dark green hairy leaves that cover the ground during summer, fall, and winter. Like Mertensia, this species comes freely both from seed and root cuttings.
Common Sundrops
The common sundrops, Oenothera fruticosa, and closely related species resemble the common evening primrose in color and shape of the flower, but sundrops remains open all day.
Sundrops grow wild front New England well into the Southern states. They range in height front a few inches to 3’ feet.
They vary, too, from single-stem plants to ones that make bushy clumps. Wild plants in this part of Kentucky make masses slightly over a foot in height — mounds covered from late spring into
Midsummer with a profusion of 2” inch yellow flowers. In the garden, they seem to do about equally well in light loam and heavy clay in the sun or partial shade.
Golden Celandine Poppy
Slylophorum species, the golden celandine poppy native from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin and Southward, takes kindly to cultivation, especially feeding with rotten chicken manure. In light woodland, it usually blooms in the spring only.
On the east side of a building, given ample moisture and food, it blooms freely here in spring and fall, with a sprinkling of bloom all summer.
A central mass of orange stamens much enhances the golden, 2” inch flowers. In addition, the celandine-like foliage makes the plant decorative all season.
A Trillium Worth Growing
Trillium rectum, native from New England to Georgia, is difficult for the inexperienced to distinguish from T. grandiflorum except by color range.
Both species are native to rich woods. T. erectum is vile smelling when brought indoors, but it has no noticeable odor in the garden. It wants ample moisture and a large shade.
It will thrive in soils ranging from lightish loam to very heavy soil. In color, it fluctuates from greenish to dark maroon, running through white, yellow, cream, pink, and red, with endless variations as to mottling and striping.
44659 by Maud R. Jacobs