Bloom Highlights

Buddleja davidii ‘Evil Ways’
Evil Ways Butterfly Bush

Buddleja davidii is native to central and western China where it is found growing in rocky soils of forest margins and thickets, and along stream and riverbanks. It grows as a deciduous multi-stemmed shrub with an arching growth habit. The stems emerge green but quickly fade to coppery-brown and produce light brownish-grey bark. Stems bear leaves in opposite pairs. The leaves are ovate to lanceolate with smooth margins and are silvery-green to dark green above with soft, white hairs underneath. Leaf axils and shoot termini produce long panicle inflorescences dense with small, tubular, fragrant, purple flowers with orange throats. Each flower has four fused sepals, four rounded petals fused into a tube with one stamen fused to the base of each petal, and a central pistil with two fused carpels. This cultivar is noted for its deep red-violet flowers and chartreuse foliage. The genus name honors the English botanist Reverend Adam Buddle while the specific epithet honors the French zoologist, botanist, and missionary Père Armand David.

Eriocapitella tomentosa ‘Albadura’
Grapeleaf Windflower

Eriocapitella tomentosa is native to northeastern Myanmar and central and southeastern China where it is found in open woodlands and sloping grasslands. It is an herbaceous perennial with a clumping, mounding habit. The wiry, graceful stems are erect, branched, and basally bear large dark green, trifoliate, pinnately compound leaves in a whorled arrangement. The leaflets are broadly lanceolate to broadly cordate in shape with serrated, palmate lobes resembling grape leaves. The stems terminate in large, open cymes of pink, showy flowers. Each flower has five to six large, pink, petal-like sepals; no petals; a ring of golden yellow stamens around a central green, globose button of numerous pistils. This cultivar is noted for its pearly, soft pink “petals” around a golden yellow center. The genus name comes from the Greek word erion meaning “wool” and the Latin word capitellatus meaning “a small head” referring to the fuzzy seedheads. The specific epithet is derived from the Latin word tomentum meaning “woolly” in reference to the woolly undersides of the leaves.

Hemerocallis ‘Steeple Jackie’
Steeple Jackie Daylily

This cultivar is of unknown parentage. The genus Hemerocallis is native to China, Japan, and Korea where it is found in mountainous grasslands, floodplains, moist thickets, and along streams. A bulbous, herbaceous perennial, it forms colonies through rhizomatous growth, creating clumps of arching foliage. The round green stem produces a rosette of long, arching, straplike leaves. The leaves are green, linear to lanceolate, with smother margins that taper to a point. The stem terminates in a single or branched floral scape bearing solitary flowers or raceme inflorescences, depending on the species. The color of the flowers across the species ranges from burgundy, red, pink to orange and yellow, and sometimes purple. The flowers are trumpet-shaped with six tapered tepals, six stamens, and three fused carpels. The flowers produce capsule fruits. This cultivar is noted for its late blooms and tall, branching inflorescences of canary-yellow flowers that can reach upward of five feet. The genus name derives from the Greek words hemera meaning “day” and kallos meaning “beauty.”

Pollia japonica
Pollia

This plant is native to Cambodia, Vietnam, southeastern China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan where it is found growing in the moist shade of evergreen and broad-leaf mixed forest and forest margins. It is an herbaceous perennial with an erect growth habit forming colonies via rhizomatous growth. Above-ground, unbranching stems are erect, green, jointed with slightly swollen nodes. The stems only bear leaves on the upper half of the stem and are arranged alternately to spirally. The long, glossy leaves are lanceolate to elliptic with smooth margins and sheathes around the stem at the joints. The shoots terminate in a loose panicle of small, translucent white flowers. Each flower has six white tepals that reflex back from the stamens and pistils. Flowers with three stamens and three staminodes have a central pistil of three fused carpels whereas flowers with six fertile stamens do not have a central pistil otherwise it is greatly reduced. After the flower fades, the inflorescence produces small, dark, berry-like capsule fruits with an iridescent blue shine. The genus name honors an eighteenth-century burgomaster of Amsterdam, Jan van der Poll. The specific epithet means “of Japan.”

Pseudofumaria lutea
Yellow Corydalis

This plant is native to the Alpine foothills of Switzerland and Italy where it is found on rocky ridges, cliff faces, and rocky ravines. It is an herbaceous perennial with a clumping mounding habit. The stems are thin, bright green, and zigzagged, bearing pinnately and bipinnately compound leaves in an alternate arrangement. The delicate, grey-green leaflets have long stalks and are elliptic to broadly elliptic, deeply lobed, and have smooth margins. Shoot termini produce a raceme of bright yellow, tubular, flowers. Each flower has two caducous sepals, four petals arranged in two whorls with two outer frilled petals, one spurred containing a nectar gland and two inner petals clasping at their apex, six stamens fused into two bundles with nectar glands at their base, and two fused carpels. The genus name is derived from the Greek word pseudēs meaning “false” and the name of a closely related genus Fumaria which comes from the Latin phrase fumus terrae meaning “smoke of the earth” in reference to the delicate blue-grey green foliage. The specific epithet is Latin for “yellow.”

Rudbeckia subtomentosa
Sweet Black-eyed Susan

This plant is native to the central United States, from southern Wisconsin in the north and western Indiana in the east, southwestward throughout Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas to eastern Oklahoma, eastern Texas, and Louisiana in the south. It grows in mesic prairies, thickets and open woodlands, and along stream banks. It is an herbaceous perennial with an erect growing habit, forming clumps through rhizomatous growth. The stiff, light green stems are erect, slightly furrowed, and sparsely covered in small hairs. The stems bear leaves alternately. The lower leaves are large, greyish-green, lanceolate, and are lobed and toothed while the upper leaves are smaller, green, lanceolate and unlobed with smooth margins. Upper leaf axils and shoot termini produce solitary or clusters of capitulum inflorescences. Each capitulum is comprised of seven to twenty ray florets, and many brown disc florets, all subtended by many green lanceolate bracts fused into an involucre. The genus name honors Olof Rudbeck and his son of the same name, both of whom were renowned Swedish botanists and professors at Uppsala University. The specific epithet is derived from the Latin prefix sub- meaning “nearly” or “slightly” and the Latin word tomentum meaning “woolly” as the stems and leaves are sparse with hairs as opposed to other species in this genus.

Succisa pratensis
Devil’s Bit

This plant has a large native range spanning from Portugal, Morocco, and Algeria in the west throughout Europe and the Caucasus to Kazakhstan and central Siberian Russia in the east. It is found in open grasslands such as meadows, fens, marshes, and bogs as well as along the banks of rivers and streams, and in coastal areas and dunes. This herbaceous perennial forms large mounds of foliage. The upright, branching stems produce large, pubescent, glossy, ovate leaves with long leaf stalks, white midveins, and minutely serrate margins in a basal rosette of opposite pairs. From the upper leaf axils and the termini of the stems, long, erect, tomentose floral stalks are produced that terminate in domed capitula inflorescences. Each of these inflorescences is subtended by an involucre of pointed, strap-like phyllaries. Each capitulum is comprised of many densely packed bluish-purple flowers, each subtended by a single, awl-like bract. Each cup-like flower has five fused, inconspicuous sepals; five round petals fused at their bases; and five stamens with purplish-pink anthers and two pistils that extend up and out of the floral cup. The genus name comes from the Latin word , meaning “to cut off,” referring to the appearance of the truncated root system. The specific epithet means “from the meadow” in Latin.

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