Cait's Garden

It is September and the plant otherwise known as “Ironweed” that I purchased early this year is 3 feet tall and flowering as promised. As you can see by the photo, it’s much too pretty to be called Ironweed (its other name “Vernonia fasciculata” is more appropriate). Yet I do get perverse delight in calling lovely native plants by their often ungainly names, like Ironweed, Swamp Milkweed, and Joe Pye Weed. You note the trend there…the word “weed” pops up often. Thus proving the old adage that weeds are only flowers in undesirable places. I wouldn’t go that far. My native plants do not seem to be in the same league as the detestable dandelion. Yet a visitor to my garden recently pointed out, ‘I can tell it’s a native plant because it’s tall and stalky.’ Yes, native plants are often a bit lean and rangy. They definitely assert themselves in the landscape, which makes them charmingly American, I think. Maybe somewhere in an English cottage garden, there’s a British gardener coveting our “weeds.”