Restless about natives.

Really excited to have gotten my Georgia asters (and sweet almond verbena) into the ground on this cool day. The asters are in a full day sun part of this bed, and if the Fireworks gomphrena come back, this will be a really pretty area next year (understanding that the asters won't bloom until fall).

Really terrific to see the rhizomes spreading, with new growth popping up.

Javi, this is looking great! Your coneflowers are really awesome!

Jay, your mystery plant is blooming! Do you know exactly what it is now? I am going to have to look the moth up. Does it only use native chestnuts? I have a chestnut by my brush pile. Highly doubt it has anything American in it. My father in law ate them before, He said they were good. They also didn’t kill him, but that’s all I know about it. Something is drilling little holes in them.

Skip, thank you for the instructions! All four of them sank. I didn’t know if there is a right side up, so I planted them sideways the way they landed when they sank. Is that a problem? Since I don’t know what kind they are, I tried to plant them in locations that resemble the one of the big tree. It sits lower than the road, so it’s probably not as dry with the runoff. Going to get a closer look at it.

Saw earlier that the bark of my big leaf magnolia is stripped. I am pretty sure this guy from my trail camera last night is the culprit. I am seeing even more cages in my future.

I just got an email that my order from Woodlanders is going to arrive tomorrow. Short notice!

Thanks, Iris. When I bought the coneflowers in June/July, they were in full bloom already; pooped out by August. I'd read coneflowers are a 'one and done' perennial, so I didn't expect any more flowers until next year: happy surprise to see these, though no butterflies (or even bees) have visited yet.

Coneflowers spread like crazy, and you can end up with a lot of volunteers in different stages of growth. I have some just stating to bloom now, but the bigger bloom was months ago. I know in my climate they spread almost like weeds, but I don't know how they would behave in Texas. Have you ever heard of Palafoxia? They are all mostly native to Texas unfortunately.

I just looked them up. Water use low? Check! Going to look further. I looked at the map for one and it’s native all the way to Georgia.

The mystery plant is Packera glabella.

The Palafoxia callosa is native in Missouri one state away too. I'm so tempted!

Iris, do you think the nut with the holes in it is still good?

The chestnut? Did some googling., Looks like chestnut weevil. I didn’t plant it, but even though it’s probably not a native one, I leave it for now. Not seeing any new ones popping up. Looks like some wildlife is eating the nuts. Not sure how. These seed pots are extremely spiky.

Jay: Mine is labelled Cheyenne Spirit Coneflower -- do all coneflowers spread like crazy?

On a side note, I was going through my seed supply and found a packet of bonus Prairie Aster seeds. It appears at least several plants are called PA, so I really don't know which I have (I searched on the original seed company/clearing house site, but it yielded no results...hmmmm). The seeds pictured on Prairie Moon look like what I have, but perhaps all aster seeds look like this. :)

I may CMS for a month and start them in pots for next spring.

Check out this discussion on Houzz - https://www.houzz.com/discussions/4723470/coneflowers-not-reliable

I haven't grown Cheyenne Spirit, but I think Dandy has. There was a more recent thread about them, but I couldn't find it. It's good to keep any chestnut trees even non native immune ones, because the near extinct clearwing moths might be surviving off them. Those sweet almond verbena, Aloysias, can grow 15 feet tall.

Ive had my species coneflowers 2-1/2 years and the ones from the first 1-1/2 year seeded around and grew even stronger this year. I'll see what happens next year but they were crowding out my NJ tea. I'll probably have to remove a lot of them next year to give the other plants a fighting chance.

I gave the SAV plenty of room, Jay -- thanks!

Javi, I have no idea if there is a difference how Aster seeds look. Hope you planted your almond verbena where you walk by often. I might be a bigger fan of the smell than you are. Walked by the hickory again this morning. Definitely not shagbark, but that’s about all I know.

Cant tell without a close up of the leaves but probably Carya tomentosa since the leaves look pretty large in the first picture.

Thank you, Skip! The leaves on the ground were all shriveled up. And the others are too high up. This was the closest I could get. Doesn’t seem very helpful.

The verbena was wafting a bit, here and there -- just enough to make me smile. I have a vitex planted closer to my back door, and I didn't want the fragrances competing.

These Echinacea purpurea bloomed months ago. Before I got the straight species coneflowers, I had a dwarf pink and a dwarf white. They never did well, and I also decided to stop buying Echinacea cultivars after tomato soup came out.

This volunteer is blooming now. I always wanted my coneflowers to spread, and now they are. Out at the prairie the coneflowers usually bloom once in spring, because there's not any bare ground for volunteers to get a foothold.

Another vollunteer starting to bloom.

https://youtu.be/hq-Viy8YlMM

Very nice, Jay! How is the weather going? Might get some rain from the tropical system. My narrow leaf coneflowers are not getting anywhere. I think in that case it’s the rabbits.

I hope that system dumps some water on you. Weather is cool,but ok. It gets dark so early now I go anywhere late in now.

Symphyotrichum laeve blooming 1st year from seed, and feeding a couple bumblebees. The sun was blaring.

Gillenia blooming 1st year from seed.

Yes-I grew Chyenne Spirit echinacea four years ago from seed. They germinated and bloomed right at the end of the season. The following year they mostly disappeared. I started another batch from my collected seed this year, they germinated well and I have about 20 seedlings ready for next year. The previous experience with harvested seed shows they don't retain the original colors. They all came out pink. They just aren't very reliable. Although I do have one plant(pic posted awhile back) that had a nice reddish color and short height. It is still blooming yet, but colors fairly faded now. It will be interesting to see if it even shows up next year. I am going to collect the seed and keep trying and see what I come up with. I did the same thing with "E Magnus" and ended up with plants that exhibit purple stems, flat petals, pink colors, and very hardy/reliable, but tall. I'm calling it "Smoky". All of my echinaceas stay up all winter as bird seed for spring migration. All of the seeds are taken by late spring.

I collected more seed today, Black Cohosh(Actaea racemosa), Bottle Gentian(Gentiana andrewsii), Bittersweet(Celastrus scandens(the real native kind)), False Indigo(Amorpha fruiticosa), and Culvers Root( Veronicastrum virginicum), Weather has been mostly in the low 40's the past week so stayed inside, but today was up to 60 so spent time harvesting plants from the winter seed bed, and moving some plants around. Nice days will come around again but fewer as time gets closer to December. Then the sky falls in!

Thanks for all the information, dandy. Not sure why, but I've never really been enamored of coneflowers -- it could be I was just never ready to accommodate their height plus their inclination to spread (re-seed?). Rather ironic given what I've got growing in the yard now. :) I'll just leave the one Cheyenne Spirit in place, and ride it out. If the Georgia asters start to make their move towards each other, they may crowd out the coneflower anyway; I'd be perfectly fine with that.

https://botanicallyinclined.org/

Cool seed company. Unfortunately they don't ship to the United States anymore from Canada. Too much hassle now they say.

And they are the only place to sell seeds for.....

The Running Strawberry Bush

Euonymus obovata! :(

Bummer they dont ship to the US now.

Just walked around the yard cleaning up leaves and planting tree seeds. Planted some white oak acorns, hickory nuts, and blackgum seeds. I put the black gum seeds next to the seedling from arbor day I planted because it didnt look like it was doing well all year and the top half of it died. I had some shagbark and pignut hickories, I covered the seed bed with a piece of hardware cloth this time. Acorns went in the ground near decaying black locusts that I'll eventually remove. I found another one of those botrychium ferns on the other side of the yard where I had planted the sedum ternatum. Creeping charlie is out of control have to figure something out.

Sowed seeds in 4" pots last night, spice bush, button bush, bayberry, clethra, and lyonia, in the hoop house for the winter. Finally got the last couple stragglers into the ground too, a Senna hebecarpa and another Lespedeza violacea.

Wow, Skip, you did get a lot done. Some cold, miserable drizzle the whole day. Didn’t amount to much yet, 0.25 inches. It didn’t get over 52 degrees, tomorrow should be sunny and 77. Hope to get some soaking rain tonight so I can finally plant all my little oaks and such.

Yes good time to get planting. Still hasnt frosted here but soon. My corn is in near total shade now, I cut them down. The cobs were small and only half developed. If I grow it again next year I'll definitely start earlier.

Hey Jay check out this place, no seeds but seedlings for only $3 https://www.reesevilleridgenursery.com/descriptive-price-list/

Which Lyonia species are you growing Skip? None of them are native here. I have a print out of all the forest preserves where the E obovatus grows. It's occurs at the place I was at a couple days ago, but I didn't know it at the time. So I guess a couple more rich woods to explore before winter. One is called Paw Paw Woods. It's a short window to find these seeds. There is a nursery that sells plants. I guess I should send the E. purpureus seeds now rather than later. I saw this leaf, some type of white oak I think. I wish I had room for a chinkapin.

There were no acorns on the ground.

Now down in Texas the standing cypresses germinate and start growing in the fall, and then overwinter and bloom the following year. I'm hoping these 3 don't freeze, but they probably will.

Lyonia ligustrina, saw it in the woods figured why not plant a few seeds. No rush with the seeds they need a summer and a winter to germinate anyway.

I don't know if that ReesevilleRidgeNursery sells smaller quantities or not, and you can't order from the website, so I sent them an email. Was your corn black?

This place sells plants.

http://www.nativetreesandplants.com/RunningStrawberryBush.html

Yes the mature corn kernals are black.

COOL! Just make sure to brush after lol.

Did the rain pick up Iris?

It did some. 0.7 inches. So did the wind. It’s nasty out there. Was just reading about goldenrods. Skunk goldenrod? There really are weird things out there.

It's hard to keep track of all these different goldenrods. The Native Plant Society picnic is tomorrow.

Sounds like fun! Hope you have nice weather for a picnic!

Ski-if you happen to come across that Viburnum(?) with the red berries again, and some seeds had fallen to the ground, I could take a couple! But actually, in my zone, I have to be careful. I bought some Paw Paws from the same place that sold me Spicebush that never overwintered, and the PawPaws have frozen tops every spring since. I may have to send them down south some place.

Iris-I see it was warmer here yesterday than where you are! Welcome to my world. First frost for me is going to happen next week. About time; it will remove the undergrowth.

Dandy, my paw paws have been in the ground for 4 years and are still very slow to do anything. They were from the Native plant sale here. It’s really windy, might have to do some branch clean up before planting anything. I really don’t like it cold. Makes me creaky from various old injuries being a gymnast as a kid and car crash as a teen. South Carolina sounded great compared to northern Germany. Usually is, but this year has been really weird so far.

Dandy, do you grow V. lentago, nannyberry? Bonap shows paw paws not native to Minnesota.

One of its sweet goldilocks spots is in my county, but I rarely see any. lol

I guess I would try growing them too, since they are growing way up north of you.

Dandy I'll hook you up if I can figure out what that Viburnum is first. The leaf margins dont match a lot of pictures online for the viburnums Jay suggested, and those dont have red berries.

I think pawpaws take 10 years to get established, not a fast grower at first. Good read on paw paws https://www.nps.gov/articles/pawpaw.htm

Edit: something dug up my acorns already, dang. They couldn't get my hickories though!

I put the red berried Viburnum on another site today and it was IDed as Viburnum dilatatum, Linden viburnum, which is an introduced species that is becoming invasive in the mid-atlantic. I would not want to send it anywhere to be planted. The lipid content of the berries is not as high as the natives and doesn't support bird migrations as well.

How do the critters find your acorns so quickly? In my case it’s the other way around. I am seeing squirrels and chipmunks digging stuff in.

Look what opened up today! Now I just need to look up how to plant them.

chinkapin oaks are common at McKinley woods. The picnic was nice. Met a couple that lives close and have their own prairie. Also Floyd, he's in charge of managing everything that belongs to the forest preserve, and Sally, she is the steward of Messenger Woods. That's the place with all the Collinsia verna. It was an awesome hike! Sometimes the people on name that plant won't bother with closing something if they feel the OP is smart enough to figure it out themselves. I think that's what it was, so it's actually a compliment.

Iris I think the squirrels must be watching me (lol). They are tired of black walnuts and pin oak acorns and want whatever I am burying. What tree is that nut from?

Are you getting involved in the native plant society now Jay? I dont belong to the one in NJ but they have a good program next weekend good speakers, Larry Weaner and a guy from the NJDEP Endangered and Threatened Species Unit. I have some family events saturday and sunday otherwise I'd be there!

Skip, it’s from my little buckeye. Posted pictures of it when it was blooming at only about 4 feet tall. Looks like my squirrels are perfectly happy with raiding the bird feeders and water oak acorns. They are about the only oaks I have mature enough for acorns.

Jay, glad you had a good time at the picnic. Plus meeting the people you can talk to about your observations of all this invasive stuff and what could possibly be done. Speaking of chinkapin oaks, my neighbor gave me a little seedling. He ordered some and they came in a pack of 5. I gave him one of my little post oaks. It was about 28 degrees warmer today than yesterday.

I can't find any chinkapin acorns. The squirrels gobbled them all. I want to get more involved with the INPS. You should join yours Skip seriously!!! Floyd said there are some twinleafs at that park but I haven't seem them. Espy had a couple Oenothera pilosella plants she's planting in her prairie. It's interesting hearing about the parks from their perspective. Don and Espy have been helping restore the island with the Kankakee mallows. They were there at the beginning. Of course I couldn't collect any seeds when we hiked. What if you plant the acorns, then cover with chicken wire and burry?

Iris, the buckeye seeds are cool looking. How much rain did you get?

I did get an inch. Really grateful for it, but digging around today, it’s still really dry. There might be some system coming next weekend. The American model would give me 4 inches, the European one just one. The instructions for the buckeye seeds are all over the place. From burying them halfway with the light spot down to two inches deep and no mention which way.

Just bury them between 2 and 4 inches deep. See if they land the same way after dropping and if they land a regular way, plant them in the same position or else put them in, any old way. I'm going to Langham island to hack up a bunch of bush honeysuckles and buckthorns with a chain and them burn them all in a huge campfire lol.

The berserker

Ha ha! Now that you know the people I guess you can go in with the big guns instead of your little trowel and pruners? Sounds great!

They were talking about this book. It sounds good. I think when I cut down the weed trees at the old place, I'm going to plant a paw paw.

https://www.amazon.com/Plants-Chicago-Indiana-Natural-Science/dp/1883362016

Jay I put wire mesh over the hickories, similar to the chicken wire idea. Mice can get through chicken wire though. Just dont accidentally burn the whole place down with the campfire. What is the INPS perspective on the parks? Do they want to remove the invasives, is there a management plan, or are they just going to let nature take its course for non-priority areas?

Maybe the squirrels are doing me a favor and finding a better spot to plant the acorns. I still have a few smaller trees in mind that would probably be more appropriate than oaks for in the yard, pawpaw too since the seedlings are supposedly deer proof.

Iris I want to go check my Aesculus parviflora for seeds now. One of them made 1 seed last year haha. Cant wait for that plant to really start to sucker and spread. Started them from tiny bareroot plants that have been in the ground about 3 years now.

I didn't hear a lot of their perspective, tho for an example. I see people riding bikes on the trail, even ones that are very steep and I never knew until they told me, but the bicyclists are doing a lot of damage to the trails causing erosion. We saw a trail that was purposefully blocked with logs and the bicyclists moved the logs and are even cutting down trees, and to add insult to injury some of them were complaining that the park district isn't maintaining the trails??? Yeah, unbelievable right? I thought they should be providing areas set aside for turtle eggs at all the places with turtles, and turns out the raccoons are a bigger threat to the turtles. The reason there aren't any old sassafrass trees at Braidwood dunes is because they were all burned by prescribed burns over the years. I was thinking when I was there, how cool it would be to take part in a prescribed burn so when I saw this event it was like oh yeah! I didn't know why the cinquapin oak got it's name. I didn't know there was another species of Castanea called chinkapin. I think I'm too far north to grow it. I'm hoping that Reeseridge nursery sells small quantities. Why else would they list a $3 price? Maybe I should find out before going hunting.

The weather is nasty, windy, drizzly, and is going to last a couple or few days. I hope all the plants I put in the ground have had enough time to establish.

https://www.dupageforest.org/catching-nature/bruce-blake

Vernonia lettermannii

The 2 Euthamias.

Nice Junipers, the berries were bluer and more impressive in person

I have seeds for the Euthamia caroliniana I think. They are either extremely tiny or not developed, I'm not sure. I'll try looking at them with the mini scope. I think I saw the other species too at a prairie. I need to go back there anyway to get some other seeds. Junipers don't grow that crazy around here. They must like being coastal. I didn't know that the silky wild rhy was a woodland grass also. I'm collecting more Euthamia seeds just to make sure lol.

Jay, sounds like a nice, informative hike. Sorry about your weather. It was cloudy here, so I planted some more trees in the back. And I mean in the way back, where the neighbors ride by. Literally.

Feels like I walked miles just hauling the mulch from the pile in the front yard. Expect me to complain by next Summer when I have to water.

Jay the seeds are small and light colored. I think those junipers are eastern red cedars, if not theyre probably some introduced species.

Iris I think you need to get a bulk pack of those tree watering bags. You fill them once a week or so and they slowly let the water out. What trees did you plant?

Today I planted Black Jack, Post and white oak. Sycamore, Sourwood, willow, fothergilla, spice bush , and button bushes. Made a dent in my pot jungle. My husband will be so happy about all these new circles to mow around.....

Wow. You got a lot of things planted Iris. It looks like it will be a nice wooded area one day. The juniper must be red cedar. The berries have medicinal uses, or you can make gin with them.

Nice list. Just stop mowing it but once a year, problem solved. What kind of willow? You have a low area for the button bush?

Yeah, one day. I have a lot of red cedar, or at least I think they are. Going to look into the uses of the berries. My apples are mostly useless because of Apple cedar rust. Weird how these things work together.

I planted Salix discolor and nigra. Using the scientific names since houzz would probably censor the common one :) Found low laying spots for two button bushes. I still have a bunch of them. The ones I have in the front yard are near flower beds (took the cuttings from them), so I just water them when I do the beds. They are doing very well, so I might have to do that with the others. Low laying wet spots are prime property. Not much left.

Checked on berries. Not as nice of a blue as Skip’s. Of course, I am not really sure what cedar it really is. There are very similar looking ones around. I never bought any, but I took plenty of volunteers popping up in the flower beds over the years and planted them elsewhere.

Not a good spot....

I was wondering if the junipers I saw yesterday were some cultivar or other species because I have never seen one so loaded with rich blue berries, and the foliage was soft. I have lots of volunteer red cedars in my yard and a couple older tree sized ones in my neighbors yards and they dont look like that. Did you relocate that cat?

I found out today my department is moving to another building bordering the park where those junipers and euthamis grow (where I took a lot my pictures this year). I will be able to walk out the door, across the parking lot and directly into the woods. I might keep pruners in my car to tackle all the invasives along the trails.

Can’t relocate it until it’s in a chrysalis and hardened. Don’t need this car currently (did last week when mine had a flat and I could not get one of the nuts loose, had to wait for my husband to come home from a trip to get it)

Hope you are not getting distracted by your new view. Are there any of these cedars that are invasive? Doesn’t look like it in my yard, but they do pop up frequently. I am not sure if some of the scraggly ones are just looking like this because if they are on the rocky almost no soil part, or are they something completely different. Some grow very wide with almost drooping branches while others look skinny. Never thought to even worry about it.

I think Juniperus virginiana is highly variable. There are cultivars like 'Gray Owl' and 'Skyrocket' that are completely different. I dont think there are any odd species invasive to around here now that I'm looking into it.

The red cedar is invasive. It's considered a noxious weed. Fires used to keep them off the prairies and they were restricted, but now they're out of control. A vollunteer was in the yard and I got rid of it. I'd rather have an eastern hemlock instead. The black locust is invasive here too. It came from the southern Appalachians, but up here it's choking out natives. If you look at bonap you would think it belonged here. Black locusts have to be treated. If you cut the plants to the ground, they grow back way worse.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5841641/ here is a paper that mentions and defines two concepts I see in native plant discussions: "native invaders" such as eastern redcedar which is capable of altering an ecosystem, and "doublethink" where you have people or groups promoting both the planting and the eradication of a species in the same range due to competing interests. So it seems any species capable of causing biome-level changes is considered invasive, in the eastern deciduous forest biome redcedar isn't a problem, but in a grassland biome it is a problem because it alters everything and causes the extinction of endemic species.

There was a thread here and the person was determined to grow Japanese knotweed and wouldn't take no for an answer. I thought we didn't have Lonicera japonica here but is.

https://youtu.be/hItzksDHfxQ

Lonicera japonica. Purple means noxious.

That's good that you'll be closer to the park.

Lonicera japonica is japanese honeysuckle, japanese knotweed goes by Fallopia japonica but I cant find it on bonap. I cant believe JHS is not shown in pink here. I guess it doesnt do enough economic damage for the state to declare it a noxious weed.

I mostly just see the big invasive bush honeysuckles, but the japonica has to be around here. And in my county it looks like.

Japanese knotweed is listed as Reynoutria japonica in bonap.

Reynoutria japonica, Japanese knotweed.

This would be great for starting milkweeds or other plants with deep tap roots. People are showing pictures of their milkweed roots, and they seem to be very large, even when all above ground growth has stopped.

What is that, cone-tainers? When I started the common milkweed in the 50 cell 5" deep plug trays, it was adequate to get them started before planting out.

That would work too. And be cheaper without having to buy the holding tray.

Wow, Jay. This looks very professional. Going to read up on the rest in a bit.

That tray holds 98 of those tubes... and they come in 2 depths. 5" and 8". Its nice to be able to separate each cell too.

Kind of makes me want to grow some plants from seeds. What can go wrong if I at least look like I know what I am doing with a setup like this? :)

Had to take down my hummingbird feeder today. Never had this problem. Maybe it’s because the guy behind me mowed right when the goldenrods and such were going to bloom?

I don't think I'm going to buy the deep pots with the rack, but it would be nice to have a couple should suffice 182 is about right lol. I did downsize. I have enough containers I hope. I'll make sure to sow the milkweeds in deep containers. It's getting around that time again. There were a lot of snow berries with berries today. Collected seeds for snow berry, Scrophularia, Helenium, Verinicastrum, Oenothera. Some plants like the woodland ones whose seeds didn't germinate this spring, I'm direct broadcasting seeds of those, like figworts and tall bellflowers and snow berries.

I had just realized that I walked into more Hackelia. The cool temps are making the waterleafs perky. Darn, there's a shoe in there.

A bunch of fruiting Symphiorcarpos. I'm going to try to restore this little spot here. It looks like there are possibly some nice natives and ephemerals in this area. It is being overtaken by bush honeysuckles. The river is in background.

These snowberries and coral berries bloom and fruit later in the year.

Those are a lot of honeybees Iris. The prairie shrub preserve was closed, maybe because of hunting season, but I might have to walk 3/4 of a mile to see it. I raked and bagged some fresh fallen leaves. Will probably be burning brush later in week.

I just ordered 5 Euonymus obovatus from Wisconsin. Thanks for the link Skip. Yahoo wahoo. :D

fairy numchucks with spikes

I spy with my little eyes

Nice, was there a minimum order?

Finally cleaned up a brush pile that was sitting in my yard all summer after that giant branch broke off the tree. Got rid of all the vines and rose brush that was piled up from earlier in the year too.

I would have rather chipped it all and left it on the property but its like $250 to rent a chipper big enough, and my other brush pile is already too big. I can always get an order of mulch back from the recycling yard where I dumped it too. HD wasted almost an hour of my time trying to rent me a truck because someone screwed up and entered the wrong info on a rental earlier in the day, so they ended up giving it to me at no charge. That was nice!

Wow, more shrubs, Jay! Where do you put them all? Of course, in my case you would not have to worry. Deer just love Hearts a burstin. Yay for a free truck, Skip. 250 to rent a chipper sounds extreme. I think the heavy duty tiller we rented was 90.

Interesting sky today. Getting chilly. Caught 3 raccoons on my wildlife camera last night. I guess none of you had a real freeze yet?

No minimum order. I talked to the owner Daryl, a nice guy. He said the original plants came from southwest Michigan. I had no notifications. I didn't have good luck with the Asclepias viridiflora seedlings, so I was looking to see if seeds or plants were available and came across another native nursery in Minnesota. It's a shame towns have restrictions on burning yard wastes.

https://www.morningskygreenery.com/shop/

What kind of restrictions? Wish around here there would be some common sense. Neighbor across the street burned down half his lawn, part of his neighbor’s fence and part of their lawn last year. Luckily their horses were on the pasture on the other side and we have a fire department 5 minutes from here. This was during our last drought.

Maybe just a few careless people ruin it for everybody, so they won't let anyone burn. There are about 27 plants I'd like to order from that nursery, but I can't. I'll have to grow most from seed and wait for flowers.

Well, don’t tempt me by naming them!

It must have taken a lot of willpower not to look at that nursery link? ? ?

A lot of willpower and a sore back from all the planting this week :)

They have nice selection and options at that link, many more species than I expected.

Yeah, I wasn't kidding, there are 27 plants I'd like to order. The Symphoricarpos occidentalis and Aralia nudicaulis were on my list of shrubs to get already. I'll wait until spring and decide. Didn't know about the Houstonia longifolia, Cirsium flodmanii and silver scurf pea Pediomelum. I don't see Apocynum androsaemifolia plants offered very often. I prefer the spreading dogbane to A. cannibinum. They sell Moerhingia lateriflora. I found that plant growing around here and put it on name that plant. Their seeds cost a dollar more than PM. It's funny I just now noticed them.

Zanthoxylum americanum. I finally found this species along the path.

Very Fall like looking, Jay! Of course I clicked on your nursery link by now... Thankfully none of the Amorpha they have are nitens or glabra. Boy spellcheck is giving me a hard time with them.

I can't find seeds or plants for those 2 anywhere. Sheffield's has seeds for Amorpha georgiana var. confuse. That's my favorite. I have 4 nana plants.

These are Euonymus elata I think. There are a lot of them. The honeysuckles are worse. I should start carrying a chainsaw with me.

Another Ipomoea species. Ipomoea hederacea, an annual.

A vast swath of Rudbeckia laciniata. The deer aren't eating these, only the few plants in my yard. I collected a bunch of seed to broadcast everywhere. Maybe the deer will miss a few.

Helenium. I collected seeds. This is a low wet spot in the prairie. They had red flags in here for something.

Do you have an electric chainsaw? My neighbor tried for more than an hour today to get his gas one started. Just about drove me nuts. I had such a nice time pulling weeds while the two dozens or so finches were chattering to each other in my swamp sunflowers. He finally got it going, just to meatball one of his box woods. That took about 3 minutes. Things have gotten so much easier since we switched. One Batterie lasts pretty long, but we have a spare in case it’s a big tree to take down and chop into pieces.

meatball...? :D

Javi, why don't you start growing broadleaf milkweed, A. latifolia. They would feed a lot of cats.

Javi, maybe it’s a word used around here to shape any kind of shrub into a round, unnatural meatball shape.

Jay, Javi could probably pull of the latifolia. Mine is temperamental. Currently looks dead again, but probably will be back in Spring. Not flowering after three years either.

She could pull it off because it's native to Texas and not native for us. I've heard people talk about lollypopping trees.

Were there any seeds on the prickly ash? Look at that rudbeckia, hope mine doesn't spread like that. That burning bush is worse than the bush honeysuckle for me. I got both at the back of the yard but I find a lot more burning bush seedlings. Might just girdle both with a hand saw and paint the herbicide on.

I have used a corded electric chainsaw and it worked pretty well. I wanted to get a cordless but my sister got me a gas one in the family secret santa last year. It works well and starts easily so I'm not complaining, but I would like to switch all my tools to electric eventually. Tired of the fumes.

I didn't find any more mature prickly ash trees around the bush so I didn't find any berries. Maybe birds planted those. I'll try to keep looking. I don't know if those laciniatas spread so bad because of seeding or root spread. It's Euonymus alatus, winged Euonymus. I'd like to get a cordless saw, but one that can put out a lot of power, because there are tons of trees to cut.

The fumes are another thing. Since I am usually close by. Holding the ladder, pulling stuff this way or that so my husband doesn’t get crushed. Weed whacker is still a gas one. Might be a Christmas idea. It’s a hassle to start. Plus you have to mix up the gas mixture.

Aclepias nummularia, tufted milkweed.

Texas, New Mexico, Arizona.

Asclepias euphorbiifolia, spurge milkweed. The smallest milkweed in the world. Mexico.

This is the most common aster at the woods. Symphyotrichum lateriflorum, the calico aster. They look amazing closer up.

Spurge milkweed: that's quite a flower to leaf ratio!

Any idea what this is anyone?

I see 3 big burning bushes and a norway maple to kill at the back of the lot. Everything is dying back leaving the japanese honeysuckle exposed, going to spray it maybe next weekend.

Wintersowing has already started

Compare your weed to Chenopodium album. Well, I don't have any seeds in containers yet. Lambs quarters are edible. I collected seed from unknown plants at the prairie. I put it on ntp. The plants were the native wild petunia, Ruellia humilis. They aren't in the same family as Petunias. Petunias are related to tomatoes, nightshade family Solanaceae. Ruellia is in Acanthaceae I think. I have been growing that Ruellia for years, but mine are floppy and look different. They spread around by seed and like to grow in the rocks edging the beds. What kind of 'burning bushes' are you referring to? The E. europeaus or E. alatus? I still need to kill 3 E.europaeus bushes here. I've already cut 2 of them to the ground, but they keep sprouting new growth. Does the foliage on the Japanese honeysuckles stay green for a long time compared to the surrounding vegetation? I collected some hawthorn berries and extracted seeds, but I don't know what species it was. There are 36 species of hawthorns that are native to Illinois, and then some non native hawthorns too. Would shrubs with big thorns keep deer out? I might need to cage my strawberry bush seedlings. I can't remember but didn't you just get a sweetfern plant? You know, I like the picture of the buffalo grass that that nursery had, showing it with the long runners. I was surprised when my plants first started doing that. What seeds have you already sown in the hoophouse codenames Skip? Are you sure that's going to be enough space? The leaves here are falling like snow. The wild ones DuPage are having their seed swap at a tavern in November. I found last years list of all the seeds that were brought and I already have seeds for all those species, save 2 gentian species, andrewsii, and the cream colored gentian. There were cream ones blooming at a couple places I went to. I just need to locate them, and I'm hoping Dandy has seeds for andewsii, I'm hoping, and there are still a few seeds of Gentiana puberlenta left. Very hazy today. Got close to freezing last night. It's overcast and drizzly.

Wow, Skip, you are way ahead in the game! It’s looking great and very professional.

Jay, I have two kinds of the native petunias. I think. Sort of look the same to me. I bought them to be host plants, didn’t see any caterpillars this year though. The deer or rabbits have discovered them lately.

Thanks the plant ID looks right. Burning bush in my yard is Euonymus alatus. It doesn't have the wings, which is consistent with the dwarf cultivar, but it still seeds everywhere

The japanese honeysuckle stays green later into the season and greens up earlier. It will even keep a few leaves in the middle of winter. I dont know if thorny plants will work as a fence, it should work, but then you wont be able to see the thing you just planted lol. I know in the trays there is all the milkweed, anemone virginica & cylindrica from last year; and the purple love grass, slender wood oats, solidago caesia, and aster laeve from september. Woody plants in the pots: wild blueberries, northern bayberry clethra, sassafras, spicebush, lyonia ligustrina, alnus serrulata, and probably others. I'll have enough space, any more is overkill lets be honest. I didnt get any comptonia, I saw it at the park but it didnt have any seeds on it. The local nursery sells it, Im tempted to get a few plants. Leaves are falling but no frosts yet. Rain tonight and tomorrow.

Thanks Iris I hope the results are as professional as it looks.

It was 70 degrees and cloudy here. Might get some rain and storms tonight. Couple of Monarchs stopped by. Not much else fluttering around. The carpenter bees and big bumble bees stayed hanging on the evening primroses most of the day. Wonder why they choose these plants so often to sleep. The Mrs. Poppins have lots of berries this year. I know, cultivar, but the bids like the berries. This is the time of year when so many weird looking Zinnia blooms show up.

That's a weird looking zinnia Iris. I don't see any little yellow disk flowers unless those are them sticking out at the bases of the tubular petals. Would you mind if I showed that picture to Zen the zinnia master? I wouldn't even have guessed that it was a zinnia. Skip, where do you draw the line between necessity and overkill? If all my seeds actually germinated I could have a space problem. Did you any Delphinium exaltatums this year? Is the Sedum ternatum doing well? Good thing I got out to hike yesterday because today was really lousy.

Sure Jay, but it’s not exactly a pretty one. I am still seeing an Etsy shop in your future with all these plants you are growing. I will be the first in line to get the ipomoea from you. I am afraid the winter weeds are already germinating. Looks like there are hundreds of tiny seedlings coming up in every flower bed. No idea what they will be.

Cypress vines, what else would they be. I'm assuming you have a Mr. Poppins around somewhere?

I know cypress vines even without the true leaves by now. Probably bittercress, hen bit, and whatever I had problems with very early Spring. I have two Mrs. and one Mr.

I'm pretty sure I'm well into overkill territory already, but basically I am using the amount of space I think I can manage given the time and effort I can put in. I have room for 20 plug trays plus those square flower pots between them. If I had more time I could do more. The sedum is hanging in there, I just weeded around it last week and was happy to see it still looks ok. I am slowly but surely working on an area for a shade garden under the norway spruce. The area has a bunch of invasive species and black locust near it, but I edged it with branches and will start adding shredded leaves and killing invasives.

I just remembered I have button bush sown, and I have some gray birch and beach plum seeds to sow.

Edit: I didnt get any Delphinium exaltatums to sprout this year and the seedlings from 2 years ago didnt survive the winter.

Cypress vine seeds like to sprout only when it starts warming up a lot, here anyways. A lot of the weeds start germinating now when it's cooler. I was looking at Izel and they show a really good range map for the plants , where they are, and there was consistently a green spot in South Carolina that I'm sure must be your yard lol.

I doubt it. But I am pretty sure that you would have no problem finding my house in our neighborhood without knowing the address.

Yeah lol. From a distance you can see flocks of birds and butterflies landing in your yard. Someone had a nightcam deer pic somewhere in trees forum I think. They have soap and bobbers hanging from their trees. Did you ever try Irish spring to repel the deer?

I didn’t. Did try the dog hair. Didn’t work. Edited to say that there are a lot of bird nests looking comfy though.

Thoufht it time to comment. Spent four hours yesterday at the local arboretum killing more Buckthorn. But, I'm impressed with the amount of natives that have been resuscitated since I started this project about five years ago? A large stand of Winterberry surfaced this year and the Cardinal flowers were just outstanding too. I found a patch of about 1000 new Buckthorn seedlings where I killed the mother plant last year or year before. Sprayed the hell out of them! There's an area that got taken over by Japanese Knotweed recently and last year I had a crew of volunteers working with me one day, and one gal had the sprayer which was primed with Triclopyr/diesel fuel and started hosing down the KW. I was aghast at first and finally got the tank away from her. Well, this spring the KW was 95% gone. So maybe that is a killer for that stuff. The place is also over run with Japanese honeysuckle, but that;s not on my agenda right now. I'm imagining me having a crew of volunteers someday and we mob the offending fauna with syckles and glyphosate, eradicating thousands all in one days time

i am surprised your talking about Prickly Ash as I just rip it out of the ground when I see it. It can be very invasive too in a garden environment. I discovered some Robinia on my property this summer and hosed it down, but it is loose on the neighborhood,

Today was the last nice day here for a while with temps near 60 and I've been busy moving plants around, like my volunteer Pagoda Dogwoods. About five years from now it should really look like total garden spot with everything I've planted over time. This is my ninth year here. I seem to have way too many choke cherry volunteers and they take way too much effort chopping them out. And the Bitter Sweet vine is another nuisance too. Even tho they are the real natives, one can only have so many. I gave away two pickup loads of Ironwood a couple weeks ago and I have another load ready again. I have nice piles of branches scattered around for bird life.

Jay-I collected the Gentian andrewsii and they produce copious amounts of seed. One flower dumps hundreds of tiny seeds. They aren't that easy to get to germinate so maybe it takes 100 seeds to get 1 seedling. I'll send lots.

Also, I bought maybe 75 Nannyberry plants so far. They take a long time to get started, that and the Choke berry. Where I lived before, there was a Nannyberry growing next to a farm field that was almost 20' tall. Huge. I wonder if mine will ever get that big.

Haven't had a hard killing frost yet, which is weeks behind normal but this week will have temps in 20's for low. That should clear out the remaining vegetation. A very very wet year here but there was one dry spell in June where I had to water a lot, but let things slide a little too much so that some of my Tamaracs got fried on the tops. They want to be near low swampy water and my place is high and sandy. But the fall color they produce is worth it.

Only things with leaves left are the Oak trees and they stay on most of the winter. I can look down at the river again from my living room window.

You wouldn't want a bunch of invasive buckthorns at an arboretum. Yeah, I always dream about going out wild a bunch of people and making a huge dent in the invasives population. I was just ripping out and busting up honeysuckles and buckthorns yesterday. The invasives are sticking out now that the true natives are losing their leaves. I was going to go do it with others next month on an island. I've read that prickly ash spreads to form thickets. If I should ever get a plant, I'll keep it a distance from other things. The nannyberry that I saw in the woods was probably 15 or 20 feet tall. Do you have cardinal flowers. I never have had good luck with them. Maybe I need a more northern genotype. I have Hibiscus laevis and Helenium autumnal seeds. They like moist soil. Do your Diervilla bloom throughout the whole season?

I really don't even notice the Diervilla in bloom very much. I had only one small plant about 8 years ago and now it has spread out to other areas. I didn't do anything, it just shows up on its own. Must be in the seed bank that's been waiting for new life. I'm also starting to see Wild Rose popping up here and there for the first time. The new pines are starting to become a nuisance. There weren't any pines younger than 50 years old when I moved in.

My Cardinal flower is like everyone else-it never returns. But it nicely reseeds at the arboretum in the marshy areas. I guess it requires a marsh in ones yard in order to have a constant population. They grow right near by to the Pink Lady Slippers.

Dandy, you have been busy. I really thought everything froze in your area by now. I also tried the cardinal flowers several times, but have given up. Really nice day here, 82 degrees and sunny. Glad I dug up the golden asters from the neighbor’s property while I had the chance. He mowed them all down. Should have gotten some more. From the sound of it, he is mowing all kinds of trees down now.

Some pictures from today.

Frostweed. To convince Javi to come over to the dark side and plant some...

Warm enough to fly

Oh, not playing fair at all, Iris! ;)

Jay, you have Frostweed, right? Skip? How well behaved is it and how tall does it get for you?

I have some seeds but didn't grow any yet. These bugs have been hanging around lately

I think I have 4 frosted plants that germinated this year, and 4 wingstem plants. I have the frostweeds planted together, but I'll have to move a couple of them in the spring.

Skip, Leptoglossus oppositus maybe? Not totally sure. A lot of the leaf footed bugs are similar.

Jay, did yours bloom? Mine did in their first year. And they are one of the very few seed starting success stories of mine.

No, they didn't bloom, probably because they stayed a miniature size for a long time before they started growing. I'm going to the seed swap, so today I collected the seeds for it. They should have a few things I'd like. I saw this oak with leaves that don't look like oak leaves.

little acorns

More pictures of the oak tree.

My water oak seedlings have leaves like that. But maybe yours is willow oak? Sorry, not an expert on oaks. Don’t even know if you would have that. Skip seems to be an expert by now.

It's Quercus phellos, willow oak. The only other oak around here with unloabed leaves is the shingle oak, Quercus imbricaria. I collected 22 acorns.

What are you going to do with all these oaks? It looks like my mostly dead looking grass is being replaced by all kinds of weeds/ wildflowers. It’s going to be interesting.

Lots of really big puff balls showing up

plus a really interesting looking hornet fly. Great mimic.

Happy Halloween! Where did everybody go? Slay honeysuckles? Got some light rain the whole day yesterday, severe thunderstorms in the forecast for today and the low tomorrow night is just 36. Yikes.

Here in Chicagoland, we have about 3 inches of snow on the ground. My brain is officially transitioning to spring-dreaming and winter sowing. I have a good number of natives to winter/direct snow. I will be trying monarda, penstemon, a. incarnata, and a few others.

I almost hate to post as almost everyone here is transitioning to winter as is hollyanne: we'll dip to the 30s (right now, actually) and tomorrow night, but next week brings 70s for highs. I'm still putting plants into the ground, but will be ready to protect against the periodic freezes that come through. It's a ton of running back and forth to cover, uncover, lather-rinse-repeat, but worth it.

Snow already? What kind of Monarda? I hope my Monarda citriodora will seed itself around. Had it for the first time this year and really love it. It’s still blooming.

I got my 5 strawberry bushes yesterday and there's a blizzard outside and it's going to be in the 20s at night. I hope I can keep them alive. The weather horrible. It's just spring, rain and no sun for days on end.

It's a real wet snow too, right hollyanne? They said on channel 7 news that we are 2 months ahead of last years first snowfall. I have to be careful scattering my seeds. There's a big flock of snowbirds that descend on the yard and gobble everything up. It's so cool seeing those little penguins at the prairie feasting in native seeds. snow to rain, rain to snow, slushy, mushy. The weather has set everything so far back.

Jay, fingers crossed for your strawberry bushes. Did they at least come potted? What are the snowbirds? We have these huge flocks of blackbirds coming now. Mixed with some grackles and starlings.

I wish I had room to grow the willow oaks, but I collected acorns in case Skip wanted them for his native tree nursery.

juncos are snowbirds. They migrate here from Canada every winter.

I haven't opened the box yet. I'm assuming that they're in pots.

Wow, it looks like Winter up there! I have Juncos in Winter. The weather is currently really miserable here. All kinds of warnings.

Its currently 76 here, very cloudy and windy. Rained all night, supposed to rain again tonight. Temps will dip into the 30s tomorrow night, day time highs in the mid 50s, then first freeze Sunday night. I'll be looking for an opportunity to spray the Japanese honeysuckle next week.

Jay if you send an acorn I'll plant it.

This red hedge is 2 doors down from me on the corner lot, it is in line with my back property line.

This is why I have so many burning bush seedlings!

Looks like all of us have unusual weather. I am seeing a lot of burning bushes around, but did not find any in my yard yet. Of course, I might not know if it is just a seedling. Done with the rain here, but still windy. My gutters are clogged :)

He looks like he would be a decent drain cleaner actually. Bonus keeping the rodent population in check.

Are those the same dwarf alatas that are invading your yard Skip? Your gutters are clogged Iris? I have cottonwoods growing in mine. Might start selling seedlings on ebay. Not even one nice day to be able to clean them.

The only thing clogging them so far is the snake. My husband is going to clean them out while he is on the roof to hang Christmas lights after Thanksgiving. Did you unpack your strawberry bushes? Since the weather was nasty, I dug around for my books. Found the important ones. Like feed the bees. What can you tell me about Figwort? Says the nectar has a very high sugar content. And plants are not easy to find, but worth it. Before I start searching for plants, I thought I would ask for your opinions.

The ones in that hedge are huge and have the winged branches. They have very thick trunks so they must be pretty old. The ones in my yard are smaller (still 6-7ft), much more shaded, and dont have the wings, but the berries are the same.

How bad does that cottonwood spread by runners?

I met the neighbor behind me today for the first time while taking my daughter trick or treating. Hes got the property behind me with all the multiflora rose, burning bush and osage orange. I didnt talk weed control with him but maybe we can have that dialogue some time. He did complain jokingly about all the deer being redirected to his yard after I put up the fence. I just laughed awkwardly, Im sure the deer were all over his yard before anyway.

Did your strawberry plants make it, Jay? Yes, this snow is so wet. Many of our neighbors lost huge branches, but so far we have been spared. The thing that seems unusual about this snow is that it has been several days in a row with little warming. Unusual for this early in the year. Your juncos are so cute! My husband is a birder. I enjoy them from a distance.

Iris - just monarda fistulosa. I have red bee balm but don't have any fistulosa. Love your gutter buddy!

Iris, figworts are good for hummingbirds and hummingbird moths. I don't think that Buckeyes use them as host plant even tho they're in that family. Maybe other moths, I'll have to look it up.

Skip, my cottonwood doesn't spread at all, it's bad enough ad it is lol. I just recently got to talk to the neighbor that has the property with the deer path. He's native minded, but he's working on his own property somewhere else and I don't see the huge thicket of bush honeysuckles and buckthorns being cut down anytime soon. The Euonymus obovatus came bare root and are already going dormant, which is good. They are alive.

Yeah

I was thinking nectar plant. Going to see if I can find them somewhere. Oh! No pots! What are you going to do? Pot them or plant in the ground? With your weather it seems iffy.

Skip, I hope you had fun trick or treating. Our houses are too far apart and not many kids around. I did buy candy just in case, guess we will have to eat it. Your neighbor should be glad you are sending the deer over.

hollyanne, it’s not “just” fistulosa! They are great! Wish we could directly put short video clips here. I have some great ones of it covered with silver spotted skippers.

There is at least one moth that uses figworts for hostplants, but it sounds like deer don't like them.

https://www.illinoiswildflowers.info/woodland/plants/late_figwort.htm

https://www.friendsofthewildflowergarden.org/pages/plants/lanceleaffigwort.html

Deer not liking them is a big plus.

I see Scrophularia lanceolata seeds are recalcitrant, they lose viability in dry storage. Starting with a plant will be necessary unless you get fresh seed and put it into moist soil right away. Senecio aureus is right next to it on the list of recalcitrant seeds, thats a synonym of Packera aurea, probably why no one sells seeds for it.

It’s probably going to stay on my hard to find list for a while then. Especially since it said in Jay’s link that the blooms are not showy enough by most gardener’s standards. Seems to be worth it for the bees though.

I see a couple places selling seed for the late figwort, and prairie moon sells seeds for the early figwort. Maybe they are more viable than I think. The geranium maculatum seed is supposed to be the same way but I got a few to germinate from seed packets last year. Probably the germination rate goes way down with age.

Wonder if this would be one to winter sow. I would assume seeds should be fresher now than buying them in Spring. Going to have to read up a bit more.

Bidens and Sandspur (at least I think that’s what it is) must be high on the list of plants with the most annoying seeds. Just a quick rant while I am spending half my time trying to get them out of my clothes and hair.

I looked up growing the late figwort from seed. Said to direct sow in late Fall. Ordered seeds on Etsy. With 4.95 for 1000 seeds and free shipping,it’s not too big of a deal if it fails. And with 1000 seeds you would hope something germinates, right? Seems they are really tiny. Any of you heard of/ ordered from Toadshade nursery? Came across while looking for the figwort. Looks like they have interesting plants.

Yes I have ordered a variety of seeds and a couple plants from toadshade. They do have some cool plants. Their marketing material is a bit dated. Are you going to sow them on bare dirt somewhere?

I was thinking to do that, but also some in pots for safety. If I plant them now on the surface, I am not sure where they will end up by April. At least I might have something to compare. I hope your weather last night didn’t turn out too bad. Guess my weather went in your direction. I didn’t have problems, but areas really close had 5 inches of rain and 60 mph wind.

Did you like the plants from toadshade? I was going to have a closer look for Spring planting since some of them caught my eye just scrolling by.

I've gotten seeds and plants from Toadshade. I like that place. This guy hasn't charged me for the strawberry bushes. I called him twice. He says he comes through my town a lot. I think he must supply natives for the park district. Very nice guy. I'm waiting for the invoice. Tomorrow and Sunday will be warm enough to plant them. I'll mulch them real good. I finished cleaning seeds. The cream gentiana seeds are like tiny little milkweed seeds. It all started with gentians. I would think that if you scattered 1000 seeds, a few will germinate at least. The only thing about the figwort seeds is I don't know if they are early or late figworts, because just the dried seed stalks are left, so I can't ID them. They are both so similar that it doesn't matter to me. I got the bible of Illinois plants

. It tells where all these natives are located. I wonder if there are similar books for your states, written by their resident botanists? It's a must have if you are an INPS member. Used for $37. I saw it new for $400. Perfect condition.

Wow. That’s some book! I have my South Carolina wildflowers book. I had to buy used since it’s kind of old and out of print. It’s not even a quarter of the size of yours and doesn’t have that many plants in it. Glad you will be getting your strawberry bushes in. Bookmarked the nursery to look at what they have later.

You bookmarked what nursery Iris? Don't expect anything for free lol. Skip, Prairie Moon still sells seeds for both species of figwort. I still have some PM scrophularia seeds left over and a couple envelopes of collected seeds. I can send mass quantities if that's what you're thinking. What do you mean about toadshade's marketing being outdated? I think I talked with them. They were nice.

I never noticed this grass before. It's Andropogon gyrans. It's cool, but there's nowhere to plant it. If anybody sees some with seeds, grab some.

I have to say I am not able to tell grasses apart. At least not most of them.

This grass is beautiful and more rare, and of course you can't find seeds anywhere,( no room anyway).

I liked the live plants I got from them and they shipped them out fast. The seeds are a little pricey for the amount you get and they took their time shipping them, but they have some cool species. I meant their catalog, seed packets and website design are oldschool.

The grasses are hard to tell apart this one is similar.

I think its A. virginicus

I got the new native plant society journal and I'm shocked because the guy I was hanging out with at the picnic is the president of the society. I had no idea. Nothing like starting out up at the top.

The nice thing about the Andropogon gyrans is it only gets 2 to 4 feet tall. But I don't have any room. I see what you mean about Toadshade's website Skip. It's hard to navigate. I just got a couple packets of seeds from them. The Solidago bicolor and Packera aurea. It would be awesome to totally eradicate the creeping Charley and have Meehania cordata growing in all the same areas. It's a smart weed because it starts invading more now when it's cold and everyone is busy with more important things. I need to dig the Apios tubers out of the big pot tomorrow. I wonder if there's a string of tubers? I might have to plant some in the wild if there isn't enough room.

There is a frost advisory, so I am cleaning my house plants and repotting some of them to bring them inside. I hope I am not bringing in a chipmunk or something. There were some big air pockets in one of the pots. Jay, did you bring in your giant milkweed for the winter?

FYI, I sowed my Scrophularia marilandica seeds(Prairie Moon) in January this year and my records show germination VG+++, meaning way too many seedlings to handle!

Skip-do you have a list of common forbs that are recalcitrant need immediate sowing, like you said with the Packera? I think Lilium are that way which maybe explains why my Death Camas(!) never germinated. But this years L. michiganense went into wet storage right away.

I just received three Dogwood plants from PM and the ground is frozen already. I'm hoping it warms up soon before the gigantic freeze up so I can get them in the ground.

edited: sp

https://garden.org/thread/view/77719/recalcitrant-and-semi-recalcitrant-seeds/ Here you go Dandy, the thread is stickied in the Seeds forum of that website if you lose the link. I think I will try ordering some early figwort seed from PM since Jay has extra of the others. Lilium has some strange seedling growth and doesn't appear as a plant for a couple years after germination.

It was warm enough to get the Euonymus obovatus seedlings planted and mulched.

This is the trunks of a non native Euonymus vine that's been here a very long time. Can't wait to kill it.

Some more smooth blue asters have flower buds, but too late.

Is there a special method for sowing Packera seeds. I just bought some. Dandy, did you sow your figwort seeds in containers or in the ground?

Dandy, did you sow your seeds on the surface? Not covered? I think the grass I have is like Skip’s. I was pulling weeds in that area yesterday, but need a spade to get that one out.

I sent the Calotropis and Dregeas to a milkweed friend in Texas as part of a trade. The 5 species of milkweed seeds he sent never arrived. No matter, I'm real close to finally getting the rare ones I've wanted for so long.

Yay! Hope you get all the seeds you want! Sometimes these plants just show up all of a sudden it seems. I searched all over the place for the Feverbark last year. Suddenly it showed up on Woodlanders website. And it was not there last year.

I pulled all the annuals up and removed the seeds from them, for the birds. Do you know if bronze fennel is perennial? I know the bulb fennel is. There was no dill this year. I like to always have some for the swallowtails. There are a bunch of little weeds germinating all over the garden. The Salvia lyrata is starting to annoy me.

Bronze fennel is a perennial. Mine are 5 years by now. They also reseed a lot for me. The golden Alexanders I planted this year are looking great but did not bloom. The finches are currently going crazy over the evening primrose seeds. Seems to be a favorite. I am not ready for everything to freeze. Still so many Gulf Fritilary caterpillars.

There were a few other swallowtail host plants that never germinated. Prairie parsley, prairie parsnip, giant cow parsnip, Sium suave, a couple others. That's strange that the Fritillaries don't know when it's too late to stop laying eggs?

I have been wondering about the Fritilary the past couple of years. They are supposed to migrate. They just don’t. The chrysalis on the car tire is still alive. Black Swallowtail only used the fennel this year, last year they preferred parsley. No idea what’s going on in their little heads. Going to look up the parsnips.

Thaspium trifoliatum. There is a burgundy flowered variation. Impossible to find of course.

I am seeing a million hairy bittercress seedlings already and the creeping charlie is spreading, I have to get after that. It was close to freezing last night. I spent a lot of time cleaning up leaves today. I shredded some with the leaf vac to dump in the shady area, but the sycamore leaves kept jamming it up so I made a huge pile and moved it to an area for mulch. I cant believe its november already, I have to get the trays cleaned out and refilled soon.

How much sun do your bronze fennel receive, Iris? I bought one last year and just plopped it in a semi-shade area. The black swallowtails were largely absent this year, except for a slew in early spring -- lots of eggs deposited, but all cats were eaten by lizards (likely). It's on my To Do list to relocate the fennel.

Mine get anywhere from 4 hours to almost the full day of sun. If you want to move yours, I would not wait too long. They do get some serious roots.

Roots: deep (tap root?) or wide..or both? << ETA: please disregard. I just read bronze fennel has a pretty long tap root and doesn't take well to being moved. I don't want to risk killing the plant, so will let it reseed for springtime butterflies.

I don’t have problems moving seedlings about 8 inches tall, but didn’t try big plants.

I sowed the Scrophularia in pots under snow. Nature did the rest. Your grass, Jay, looks a lot like Little Bluestem does. I collected a bunch of grasses this fall and put them all in one bag..

Heads up. I'll be mailing seeds out this week. Don't order anything for a while.

Ehh haha I just ordered some Lilium superbum and Podophyllum peltatum off etsy. Been working like crazy, the sleep deprivation and extra cash = impulse buy. I got a heat mat with temp controller to warm stratify the blue Viburnum seed too, I cant wait 2 years for germination.

What do you mean, you're young yet. You have plenty of time.

A correction: I bought ten Black Haw Viburnums a few years ago that consistently freeze off.

The Andropogon gyrans has the largest flower out of all the blue stems. Much bigger than Andropogon scoparium. I saw a picture of all those grasses together. It's not native to Minnesota. Andropogon hallii is. Dandy, do you have, or have you seen twinflower, Linnaea borealis up there? It's a new plant I'd love to find. Skip, did you order mayapple plants or seeds? I'm going to see if I can be an assistant to the people with grants, who are studying and monitoring our rare endangered milkweeds, like Mead's milkweed. I got 500 coin envelopes for seeds. They seem more appropriate than my hand made monkey puzzle origami ones. If the weather stays nice, I wouldn't mind visiting the nearby world renowned Morton arboretum this week.

http://coastalplainplants.org/wiki/index.php/Andropogon_gyrans

I got a box of little envelopes too, comes in handy. I ordered 5 bareroot plants of each. That would be great if you could participate in some studies and conservation activities!

I got my seeds today. Will follow Dandy’s instructions. Snow might be hard to come by. Get a bit every couple of years, but even an inch is shutting everything down as long as it sticks. Temperature dropped to 30.4 yesterday morning. Surprisingly not too much damage. The cold blast expected for Friday is probably going to do it though. Not many butterflies today, just some flies and little bees. Already missing the buzzing. Going to look up twinflower. I do know the Superbum lily, was planning to get some.

I dug my 2 Apios tubers out of the big pot. Each one had about 20 babies so a total of 40 tubers now. These sites make it so easy to order now with just 1 click. My missing seed package finally showed up today. I think there are some twin flowers at the woods. I haven't seen them yet. They look like little bells.

Jay, that’s really cool about your Apios. Looked up the twin flowers. Really cute! Luckily not for me :) Guess you will get the cold blast first?

It looks like the twinflowers prefer cool weather. My hairy balls and tropical milkweed are pretty much froze, but the tweedias still look good. A few milkweed beetles are still on the pods.

I cleaned out all the spiderwebs, leaves, sticks and dirt from my trays, ready to refill and start again! There was this spider living in one of them that startled me.

What missing seeds showed up Jay? There is a cool plant profiled on the NJ native plant society website... not sold in the trade that I can find. Xerophyllum asphodeloides http://www.npsnj.org/photo_galleries/photo_pages/xerophyllum_asphodeloides.html native to dry pine barrens and pine oak forests from georgia to NJ.

The seeds that came today were from a milkweed trade I did. They were in limbo for a couple weeks. The native plant society met tonight. Floyd, the president gave a presentation. It was very interesting. That spider is cool, I'd be startled too. I need to start getting my pots and soil mix ready. First I have to move some brush so I can have room to work.. The Apios roots grew pretty deep, so I had to dump all the soil out of the pot, and dig through it. Are you heating seeds that are going to take 2 years to germinate? I'm going to look up that plant now.

Skip, some sort of fishing spider perhaps? Jay, what kind of milkweed did you get? My tropical and hairy balls don’t show any damage after the 30.4 degrees.

I recieved seeds for humistrata, asperula, speciosa (2 subspecies), viridiflora, cordifolia, fascicularis, and I just got seeds for Matelea decipiens. I still need meadii, lanuginosa, quadrifolia, amplexicaulis, Matelea obliqua, and Gonobolus suberosa. With all those who needs non native, tropical milkweeds?

Jay-I've never seen the Linnaea, nor scads of other noteworthy plants.

Did anyone ever buy Mayapple from that guy I told you about in Nebraska, Loess Roots?

Dandy, I haven't bought any mayapple plants or seeds. I wanted to collect a bunch of seeds, but didn't get to them in time. I forgot about that Loess Roots place.

Skip, the Xerophyllum is nice. It's a pines barrens plant. How far are you from the pine barrens? The closest thing we have to pine barrens here, is sandy, oak savannas.

http://www.indefenseofplants.com/blog/2015/3/12/an-extinction-in-chicago

Im going to warm stratify the maple leaf and arrowwood viburnums. In nature the seeds are produced in the late summer and naturally go through winter->summer->winter, then germinate in spring, but they only need that warm period to germinate. I should get germination a year sooner than wintersowing by artificially warm stratifying. Im pretty close to the pine barrens, the soil on my property is loamy but just 2-3miles south down the street it starts to get sandy.

I dont remember reading about that Loess Roots place either.

Jay: Really great (but surprising) to hear your tweedia made it through a freeze. My seedlings (started in early spring) just started to take off this past month, and I'm debating whether they can/should go into the ground now: temps in the 80s today, and extended forecast through Thanksgiving will be 60-70s. I think I'll go for it!

Javi, yeah, I would go for it. How long to do have to warm stratify those seeds Skip? Can you do that technique with everything that needs 2 years to germinate?

I went for it -- thanks for the nudge! Blue porterweed is gone (it's only a year old, and grew 4' tall x 7' wide -- I've got another in the yard if I really miss it...don't think I will) -- filled up a 40-gal trash can:

Two tweedia in its place:

I'm holding one aside 'just in case', and another one is pretty puny -- I'll need to coddle it over winter.

https://bioone.org/journals/The-American-Midland-Naturalist/volume-153/issue-2/0003-0031(2005)153[0232:EDIVAC]2.0.CO;2/Epicotyl-Dormancy-in-Viburnum-acerifolium-Caprifoliaceae/10.1674/0003-0031(2005)153[0232:EDIVAC]2.0.CO;2.short

16-20+ weeks warm stratification. I dont think it will work across the board, Jay. Seeds have varying dormancy mechanisms. Maple leaf viburnum has a simpler dormancy than some of the others. The embryo develops during the warm period and the root emerges and it starts growing. In other dormancy mechanisms the embryo develops during the warm season then the root emerges, then the cold season is needed to break the dormancy of the shoot growth.

Javi is a woman on a mission!

Skip, there is a lot to be learned from you. You are putting a lot of thought in your seed starting. Hope it’s a big success. My spiders are not as scary looking :)

As you can see in the front. right the Oxypetalum coerulea and solanoides still look good even with temps dipping to almost freezing at night. It's probably more temperate or mountainous where they originate from in South America. There are 30 or 40 other 'tweedia' species. I really like the 'pink?' flowered O. solanoides because the monarch cats love it and the leaves are like velvet.

There's a ton of leaves. I need to collect a bunch now while they still have more nutrients. I've been direct sowing natives on this side and further back. I'd really like to see this being a path with woodland natives on both sides. I guess if starting seeds with that water method isn't a sure thing than it's probably good to sow some in the ground as backup.(you never can be too sure) Skip, what is it you want us to see in that link? Or are you just letting us check out that journal? It looks interesting, thanks. Part of the link looks black like it didn't include everything.

So this swamp down the hill from me is overrun by Phragmites australis, a native giant reed that's taking over places where it's introduced, but doesn't belong. It's pretty much a monoculture of it down there. A few tall natives are still holding on in the ocean of reeds. A few years ago it all caught fire and burned, but came back stronger. This reed must be related to Cinna auruniacea. They both have very similar flowers and other characteristics.

The ground is still saturated making it easy to see that the deer are coming around. That's a cute spider Iris. I took in my common milkweed pods. The beetles left. They must sense a deep freeze is coming.

I mentioned Loess roots some time back. Very cheap plants. This is maybe the last week to get plants due to increasingly cold temps in mid west. I suggest getting at least ten Mayapple, plus whatever else.

Owner: Rod Angeroth
PO Box 877, Stanton, NE 68779-0877
402-439-5256; email
Location: 715 11th St.

email: rodangeroth@yahoo.com
Specializing in woodsgrown botanicals, jumbo-size ginseng roots (12 years +), large-size goldenseal roots & black cohosh, jack-in-the-pulpit, bloodroot and Virginia snakeroot. Fresh roots available for tinctures or planting stock.

Thanks Dandy. And I thought I could control my plant lusts?

Dandy, how do you order from that place? There's no way to do it online. I want to order Virginia snakeroot.

You have to send him email. Ask for a price list. He does this as a hobby sort of. Tell him I sent you!

Ok, I will, thanks.

This new book by Swink and Wilhelm is amazing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypericum_swinkianum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Swink

Hypericum swinkianum isn't listed on bonap. It was considered a subspecies of Hypericum kalmianum until 2016. It's a beautiful St. John's wort. The flowers are huge.

Whats with the flickr photo? Is the new book the one you showed the other day? The link I posted earlier was the reference where I read about the seed germination. There is a text book I want to read a bit called Seeds: Ecology, Biogeography, and, Evolution of Dormancy and Germination by Baskin and Baskin that has all this information about dormancy mechanisms and germination.

Edit: interesting that Swink had little formal education in botany, especially early on. There was an article I read a while ago about insect declines, but they also mention how valuable 'amateur' surveys and records are to current scientists. The records of these volunteer organizations are more consistent and date back further than many "official" records.

Jay: I've got tweedia and leaf envy. :)

I guess back in the time of Linnaeus they called honeysuckles honey****les and we saw it written that way in the film we watched, and we were laughing about it, and I said that's what we should call the invasive bush honeysuckles lol. If you google that word you'll see old botanical texts using it. The flicker picture was just a joke for a laugh haha. Leaf envy, oh I get it. I would send them all down to you if I could afford the shipping javi. That germination manual sounds interesting. What's the name? Yeah, just from the wiki article about Swink, I learned of a couple more preserves close by here. The book has all the keys for the plants too. Another reason why I want to find Linnaea borealis is because Linnaeus named that plant after himself. The past few years it's stayed warm late in the season, but this year it's gotten cold fast making working outside not so fun.

It was nice to work outside in the early afternoon. Starts to cool down quickly after 4pm. What kind of plants do you recommend for late Fall that can stand a degree or two below freezing and gets going? My Champions right now are frostweed, mist flowers and purple top. Can’t be mad at this one for reseeding itself all over, it has been blooming since Spring. A lot of the other stuff, even all goldenrods, are done or did get frost damage.

My frostweeds got froze and are wilted, but some other plants are still ok. I think the couple plants that bloomed the longest were cowpen daisies and smooth blue aster. Today I planted a couple swamp milkweed seedlings and I buried all the Apios tubers. I don't think I have room for 40 Apios vines so I was thinking of introducing some to the wild.

I am going to look into the cow pen daisies. I looked before, but didn’t find any. Most asters that didn’t get eaten by the deer are fading. Carolina climbing one still has some life left in it. I am not sure what my Apios is doing. It looked pretty wilted even before the frost. Guess I will find out in Spring.

The one aster that bloomed the longest around here was the calico aster. I collected seeds of the heath aster, S. ericoides. I like the foliage. I can send you a bunch of cowpen daisy seeds if you want. They self sow like weeds. I just saw that they shipped my spicebush seedlings and I got the Loess Roots price list. Maybe I can order and have the plants shipped in the spring?

I would love some of the cowpen daisies. Is your ground workable to plant your spice bushes? Got an empty spot for them left?

I'll send you a bunch of cowpen daisy seeds. There's space in the bed where the annuals were. I'll put them in there for now. The ground is still soft.

Glad you have a spot for them. Mine are just so slow. Maybe next year, the first ones will be in 4 or 5 years then. It’s supposed to rain tonight, the temperature going downhill from there.

I looked up spicebush growth rate, and they are well known for starting out real slow. Yours should start picking up speed, now that they have good root growth. They like moist soil, so I don't know how your drought affected them. I don't have any spots where it stays moist all the time. I might have to water them occasionally after they are established, just like I have to water the ferns when the ground is dry.

Mine are in areas that are as wet as possible, but I do water them. I have been digging out wild violets. Not that I don’t like them, but I really don’t need hundreds in the flower beds. Came across the mother of all violets today, hidden between the green headed coneflowers. What a pain to get out. Probably will come back anyway.

What size were yours when planted Iris?

Mine were just about 12 to 16 inches. Some were eaten down to about 3 by the deer. They really just grew a couple of inches in height, but they do have some side branches now.

I am hoping my spicebush seeds germinate and then I can bareroot them next winter and plant them straight into the soil to reduce establishment issues.

Jay did you order Linnaea borealis? I just noticed its on the Reeseville Ridge plant list.

Hope you all stay warm! Not too many insects out today, even the little wren looked all fluffed up.

Maples are showing some color.

Hey skip, I didn't notice the Linnaea on Reeseville's plant list. That was before it was on my radar. I was just intent on getting the Euonymus obovatus at the time. I think I'll hold off getting them until spring. I'll probably be getting the 10 spicebush seedlings tomorrow and I have 10 mayapple roots and 10 goldenseal roots coming from Ron at Loess Roots. We are getting deep freezes, so I don't want to order anything more until spring. I'm already planning on ordering some A, serpentaria from Loess and more plants from the native nursery in Minnesota and I'll definitely be ordering the twinflower from Reeseville. The wild ones are having their seed swap tomorrow. I wish I knew what everyone was bringing. It would be nice to get ahold of some seeds for Collinsia verna and Erigenia bulbosa. Have you ever checked out the book Plant Communities of New Jersey, by Beryl Collins? It was in the teens last night and probably tonight too.

The teens? Yikes. I was going to ask if you did get your spice bushes today. You are going to the seed swap, right? Guess you have most of what they are having, but maybe there is a nice surprise.

31 last night, 22 tonight. I got my mayapple and turks cap lily from etsy today. I'll plant them tomorrow. I sent an email to Reeseville ridge to order Amelanchier stolonifera and the Euonymus obovatus too. Either now or April, whatever works for them, havent heard back yet. I have that book by Beryl Collins, and lets just say I was a bit disappointed in it. The botanical surveys are from the 90s and include japanese stilt grass and japanese honeysuckle. I guess they will always be present here now, but I was hoping to get more info about remnant plant communities or precolonial plant communities from my county. The list of herbaceous plants was very short and not detailed. Hope you find something cool tomorrow.

Maples are looking nice Iris. I love those little wrens.

The book that I have includes non native plants in the surveys from the standpoint of how they were upsetting the balance of the native flora. I did look for reviews of that Collins book and couldn't find any. It's just too cold to be ordering more plants. The ground will probably be frozen soon. Iris, it looks like autumn has finally arrived for you. Do the adult Fritillaries leave and go south? Do you still have hummingbirds?

Didn’t see a hummingbird in a while. Really weird, but I had a lot less hummingbirds than usual. October there usually would be a dozen around the feeder. This time around 3 at the most. Still all stages from tiny caterpillar to adult with the Gulf Fritilary. They are supposed to migrate, but I have questioned it at least in my yard for the past few years. Forecast says 30 for tonight. Out here it’s probably going to be 27.

I don't think I'm going to the seed swap. I looked at the list of seeds they had last year and there are only 2 that I'd be interested in but I can just order those from Prairie Moon because I would spend more than that driving there and back. The 2 species I was interested in were Helianthus occidentalis and Hypericum pyramidatum. O don't really need any more seeds lol. I like the Hypericum swinkianum too.

Just looked at the Helianthus occidentalis. Well behaved sounds good. Pulled some weeds and Zinnias today. Finding all kinds of plants like the early meadow rue I had almost forgotten were there.

Yeah, I just recently noticed how nice the western sunflower is. I like the long, leafless stems. There are a lot of weeds germinating in this cool weather, creeping Charley, Salvia lyrata, cleavers, chickweed, cress. It's too cold and wet to do anything about them.

I've been cleaning my common milkweed seed pods. The seeds look beautiful. It's nice to see people still get excited for recieving syriaca seeds, even tho they are so common to me. I'm sending some to Ohio to add to the gene pool. I don't think there's any good way to clean milkweed seeds without making a mess with the silk, or am I missing something?

I have no idea about the cleaning. They just fly around here :) It’s not fun working outside today, still just 40 degrees. But looking out the door, the dead Zinnias are just looking depressing. So they have to go.

If anybody wants coralberries to plant let me know. I found a treasure trove of them.

I looked up coralberry, this bit scares me "Symphoricarpos orbiculatus, commonly called coralberry, is a dense, suckering, native Missouri, deciduous shrub which typically occurs in open woods, fields, pastures and thickets throughout the State. Spreads by runners to form impenetrable thickets in the wild. Typically grows 2-5' tall with arching stems." -Missouri botanical gardens.

I got my shade garden mulched with shredded leaves and planted the mayapple. The soil was easier to work and fluffier than I expected. Also planted the Lilium superbum where I had the veggies and mulched with more leaves.

It does spread by suckers, but the new plants always are a distance from the m as in plant. I don't see how they could ever be impenetrable. I'll have to go look at the thickest colony I know of by the river. Usually I see most of them spaced no more closer than this.

I'd say the tallest they get around here is 3 feet. They are easy to walk through. I really like them because they are helping hold back the worse non native invasives. I've been thinking about planting Zanthoxylum too, but that plant worries me more than this one.

Amelanchier STOLONifera. Now there's an impenetrable thicket lol.

Yeah I have thicket forming plants all over, and probably too many honeysuckle family plants with the coral honeysuckle, viburnums, and JHS already. The brambles and multiflora make the thickets in the back already too. I am going to plant the running serviceberry where I can mow around it at least. I want to eat the fruits too

The fruits aren't so great. Kind of like watery blueberries with no tartness. Some farmer in Iowa said some trees have tastier fruit than others.

Speaking of berries, I wonder when I will see some fruit on my various kinds of huckleberries. Dangle berries, Farkleberries. Could it be they are too far apart for pollination? Most are about 3.5 feet tall by now.

It's going to get cold ext week, as in record breaking cold over the eastern half of NA. Even down into S Carolina! It's already cold enough here, been way below normal for over a month at least. I can't dig into the ground any more. I have some berry seeds I think I will just lay on top in my planting bed and cover them over with composted material. My asters barely had a chance to bloom and then they froze off.

I got almost all my seeds collected that I wanted. But my Mianthemum racemosa all rotted cuz there was too much water in the baggy. Will remember next year not to do that. The M. stellata are ok tho. I have to collect them fast to stay ahead of the birds.

Dandy: I wonder if that will happen with my recently planted Georgia asters, purchased as one-gallon plants. I may throw sheets & tshirts onto anything I planted recently, just in case. We'll experience the most drastic temp swings in the next couple of days: it's 43 right now, and will peak at 77 later today. Tomorrow will hit upper 70s again before plummeting to 40s to upper 30s overnight -- and then two days not going above low 40s during the day, with sub-freezing both nights. Yo-yo weather.

The A. stolonifera appeals to me as a ground cover similar to blueberry, but is not affected by black walnut juglone. It is the shortest growing species in the lineup of native Amelanchiar. I have read the fruits are tasty but maybe it depends on the individual plant. The only seeds I could find for it were bred in europe, so I had to search a little more to find plants. The gonativetrees owner has it listed but said he's out and actually referred me to Reeseville Ridge, I didn't even put 2+2 together that it was the same place selling the Euonymus obovatus until 2 days ago. He said the owner of Reeseville ridge drives around all over the eastern US collecting seeds, just like he does.

We're supposed to have a low of 21 on tuesday night, high of 31 on wednesday then low of 22, but every other day will be above freezing next week.

I didn't know they were dwarf serviceberries. It sounds like that species has better tasting fruit. Nice choice for growing near black walnut.I was just looking at Resseville's plant list and forgot how large it was. I never finished, it's too much to take in. I think I'll get a bunch more stuff in spring. They have a lot of great species, even American chestnut. They have Hypericum kalmianum too. I want that. The owner Daryl is a nice guy. Today is the warmest day for awhile. I need to plant the spicebush seedlings. I hope everyone's plants will be alright. Now it says it might reach into the 50's in a couple weeks. That would be nice. Javi, does the weather there eventually kill your outdoor, tropical milkweeds? I wish I had been able to collect more of the pink Tweedia seeds, so I could send you some, but it stopped making pods. I have 10 new humistrata seeds. I think I'll germinate them with the water method and start them under lights about 8 weeks before spring. Hopefully much better results this time. Coralberries are hostplants for hummingbird clearwings. The lawnwower's down. Somebody didn't check the yard first and then ran over a metal flamingo buried under the leaves lol.

Flamingo....ooopsy! Thanks for thinking of me, Jay -- maybe next year. Our freezes do indeed kill the topical MW top growth, but they've come back two years running. I actually wouldn't mind if they didn't, so I can make way for more natives. Observations this year show the Monarchs actually much prefer the hairy ball$ to the tropical MW. As soon as the day warmed up earlier this morning, I spotted a couple of Question Marks, and the snout is back -- all in addition to a few fritillaries, a lone sulphur and a snout. With the exception of the frit and sulphur, all others have been drawn to G. physocarpus -- not to mention the various bees. This is a definite keeper!

I noticed that too. Many more monarch cats on the hairy balls. Their flowers seem to have more nectar too. And they grow back so fast after being eaten. I hope your Georgia asters don't freeze, and still can set seed. Is there a stretch in winter when there are absolutely no butterflies and cats in your yard.And the sculpture was a water bird, not necessarily a flamingo of which I have no affinity for perhaps an egret or heron, and it certainly wasn't pink, it was dark ceramic tiles and wrought iron ouch.

That's weird, houzz edits out all memories. I wanted to start putting red hearts everywhere lol.

Hmmm...maybe I should go ahead and harvest some of the dried aster seeds heads, in case the flowers actually got pollinated and I've got viable seeds.

I think asters are self fertile. I harvested a whole bunch of NY aster seeds off my plant if anyone wants some. Cleaned up more and shredded more leaves for mulch and insulation.

American holly cutting ready for winter:

Shade garden area, going to replace that bush honeysuckle in the background asap. Need more leaves somehow too:

Anyone want some osage oranges?

Skip: I hope the Georgia asters are self-fertile as that would be great news for me. I read on the GNPS (GA Native Plant Society) site: Most Georgia aster plants are self-sterile and need cross-pollination from another colony to produce fertile seed, so its main mode of reproduction in the wild is by spreading underground roots, also known as rhizomes.; which is why I bought two.

For starters I must kill my autocorrect. I said that houzz edits out all emojis and it changed it to memories lol. I think I have enough new asters already. I have seeds for the NE aster and the heath aster. I probably don't have room for anymore anyway, but thanks for asking.

The spicebushes were a nice size for seedlings. This is a great way to add decent quantities of plants inexpensively. I'm sure I could have gotten a better deal with buying seedlings of the spikenard. There were supposed to be 10 spicebush and I counted 9, but the majority were very well developed so I'm happy. They were from Native Wildflower Nursery. I also got Lilium superbum from them.

This annual bed is turning into a nursery bed. I have 20 more roots coming and once I get them in the ground that's it. Then it's all about winter sowing again. Javi, why can't your one aster pollinate the other one? Why does it have to be a different colony?

I had the same question, Jay. I mean, if it can't, it can't. But how many of us shopping from a nursery can be assured which colony each aster's from? :) Oh, well, if I can't harvest seeds, I'll just try to divide in the spring, when they come back <<< note the optimism there? :)

Wow, you all have gotten a lot done. Sorry about the lawnmower, Jay. But the story with the poor flamingo/ heron still sounded kind of funny to me. Javi, I saw a little Georgia Aster about 4 feet from my oldest one. Didn’t notice it before. No idea if this would be a runner or a seedling from last year’s seeds. This was my only plant until this Fall. I take it either way!

Iris,If it's a runner then send some to me ha. I'm sending out your cow pen daisy seeds today. It snowed overnight. So glad I planted those spicebush yesterday. I saw that M. pomifera, the osage orange tree has it's very own sphinx moth. A lot of those grew across the street in the cornfield when I was a kid. I found out we have our own native barberry and our own native privets Forestiera. Reeseville Ridge has a shrub called Dirca palustris. It's rare everywhere and only gets 9 feet tall. They call it musclewood. None of the Lyonia species are native to Illinois. I should have jumped on it when NWN was having specials on trilliums. I just want the prairie trillium, T. recurvatum. I looked at the lists from the nurseries that I want to order plants from in the spring, and then wrote down all the plants from each place that I'd like to get in the spring. It's a pretty, long list lol. I think maybe I should order the Gonolobus suberosus and twinflowers now tho, better safe than sorry. The mower was repaired this morning. I was confused because the society people were talking about Lonicera prolifera, and I hadn't heard of a native hs by that name. The only 2 native species around here that I knew of were flava and reticulata. Last night I realized that reticulata and prolifera were the exact same species. That kind of happened when I was looking for Asclepias longifolia. Asclepias hirtella and A. longifolia are the same species, but actually hirtella is a subspecies of longifolia that has s much bigger range than the pure longifolia that occurs around the gulf states. Hirtella was able to expand into a wider range. I'm pretty sure hirtella isn't listed on bonap. They consider it a variation of longifolia. Getting back to Lonicera reticulata, I scattered a truckload of those berries around my yard, and they tasted sweet. I got a persimmon just to see what it taste like. They were never around when I was growing up. They must not have had them in the 'old country's. Iris, is your soil still dry? No cocoons around the yard? Woodthrush has some awesome plants too. Meehania cordata, Commelina erecta, Valeriana pauciflora, ect. The one guy who cowrote my big book on Chicago plants Gerould Wilhelm, has since cowritten another big book about Chicago area plants with another botanist. Have to check that out. It's 25 outside.

• Jay, I can send it to you in Spring! I have musclewood, but it’s Carpinus caroliniana, so not the same. Going to have to look up the other plants you mentioned later. It’s currently a gorgeous, sunny 67 degrees. Rain and the cold should move in overnight, so I am snipping away at frozen off cypress vine without breaking sprinklers or the other plants it had overtaken. The Gulf Frit cats are still alive, but I don’t think they can handle the upcoming 22 degrees. Plus most of my passion vines will freeze.

Dirca palustris looks cool, another early spring bloomer. Im going to write that one down. Reeseville never responded to my order inquery maybe the guy is away. I really want to get a Hamamelis viriginiana, do you have one Iris, is it blooming now?

I feel the Monarchs are sensing the temperature shift, as 8-10 were flying and nectaring frantically all morning. Bonus sightings: a snout and a Red Admiral! I noticed one of the Monarchs was tagged, but I couldn't get close enough to get a pic -- would love to know where he/she travelled from. I dug out our kids' butterfly net, still hanging in the garage. If the butterflies hang around after the next few days, I'll see if I can't spot any more tagged Monarchs.

Skip, I do have witch hazel. Planted two little ones 2 1/2 years ago. They got eaten before I realized they also need cages. So they are still small, not flowering. There are a lot of small trees and shrubs entering their third year, so I hope they will finally get going.

Javi, I really hope you can get a picture of a tagged Monarch. Must be exciting for the one that released it to find out which way it went.

Edited to say I just looked at our local weatherman’s update. Windchill values in the teens by tomorrow night. A 60 degree drop. He is all excited. I am not.

Tags: a new reason for me to chase butterflies around the yard. Honestly, I know I'm a visual spectacle for the second-story neighbors that surround me: I don't care! :p Who knows; I may start getting involved in the tagging program next year. I'd read that might actually be a greater benefit to Monarch research and preservation than growing host plants, 'rearing' & releasing Monarchs, etc. ... not that I'd give up these pursuits!

You go, Javi! Some pictures from today. Looks like there won’t be too much around after. The citriodora blooms look a bit floppy from the last frost, but I guess they still work.

Frostweed, the blooms on the lower plants look a bit better

my company today.

Today sure felt like winter. Skip, I had trouble reaching Resseville too, until I called and talked to the owner. We talked about 3 times. Besides maybe getting the Dirca palustris, I also want to get these next time, Aralia spinosa, Comptonia peregrina, Fothergilla gardenii, Hypericum kalmianum, Linnaea borealis, Castanea pumila, and Epigaea repens. If tagging Monarchs helps, I'll do it. They have to travel pretty far from here. Amazing.

Skip, I think that Daryl, the owner of Reeseville mostly handles business calls on his own phone, so if you try calling him on your break or something you might get him. He might switch back and forth how he takes calls.

Thanks for the tip, I'll try giving him a call. Have to look at the plant list again so I dont end up making several orders. Im thinking maybe spring delivery now. It was in the 60s here today, it felt hot. Temps are supposed to crash tomorrow night. Dont you already have Aralia spinosa? I will get some Comptonia at some point too, the one at the park has a really nice smell and the nursery nearby sells it.

Javi, tagging sounds like a good pursuit, anything to help our understanding. It does feel a little futile sometimes growing a handful of native plants that can fit in my yard, but I still like to see these plants there.

Iris how do you get such nice pictures?

Wow, I have a lot of plants to look up. I have Fothergilla major and two others. gardenii sounds familiar. I need some sort of spreadsheet of what I want to order from what nursery. Toadshade sent me their paper catalog. I still have 200 dollars in gift certificates from Prairie Moon I am going to have to spend somehow, too :)

Skip, I usually have my little camera with me when I am out in the yard. It’s small enough to just have at a belt loop and a “tough” one, so it doesn’t mind getting wet and dirty. Thank you for saying they are nice pictures!

Yeah, I already have an Aralia spinosa plant and it's doing good. I was going to use them as screens in parts of the yard after I cut down the remaining buckthorns and mulberries. A few cheap extras now will help, tho they do sucker when mature. I ordered some milkweeds from Morning Sky Greenery in Minnesota and they are shipping them in spring, but I want to order more plants from them in spring like maybe Actaea pachypoda, Actaea rubra, Adiantum pedatum, Apocynum androsaemifolium, Aralia nudicaulis, Blephilia cilliata, Blephilia hirsuta, Cirsium flodmanii, Didecatheon amethystinum, and Viola pubescens.

Hope you are all staying warm. It’s feeling miserable here. There go the mist flowers.

I may be sharing a similar shot after sunrise tomorrow, Iris.

Frostweed is doing it’s thing. Not as dramatic as some of the pictures I have seen on the Internet, but still pretty cool.

EXTREMELY cool!

Have any of you passion vine people ever heard of Turnera ulmifolia ? It's in the same family, but it's not a vine. And the same cats that use Passiflora will eat this. I could probably grow it as an annual.

https://homeguides.sfgate.com/grow-turnera-buttercups-68227.html

Iris, I mailed out your seeds today. You should get them Saturday. It 18 now. We've been in a deep freeze all week.

Thank you so much in advance, Jay! I have not heard of the turnera. Not hardy for me either. It’s 42 degrees here right now, but the wind makes it feel so much colder. I should take a look at some of my plants. Very surprised Hairy Balls doesn’t look that bad after 23 degrees. The tropical in the pot next to it looks dead.

Its 36 here now, was down to 18 last night. Not as cool as the frostweed but the penstemons turned a nice red color. My wife just sent me a picture of the groundhog digging around my Apios vines. The groundhog is about to get relocated...

Did you take a picture of the Penstemon? Mine just shriveled up. Aww. Poor, cold groundhog looking for groundnuts.

No I just ran straight to the car haha. I'm not a fan of the cold

I looked around a bit. Carolina Climbing Aster is still looking good. What a trooper!

How does that aster climb? It's the only species in the genus Ampelaster.

I am not even sure. It doesn’t have any tendrils, but it weaves nicely in and out of the fence somehow.

I grew the Mexican flame vine once. Pseudogynoxys. It went by Senecio when I grew it. There's another climbing native in that family. I have to google it.

It's called Mikania scandens, climbing hempvine. It like wet, moist soil.

We want to leave this world better than we found it.

Wet is really hard to come by here. Well, forecast says there might be sleet tomorrow

Really odd. The pecan trees lost most leaves in one night. And they were still green. Thought it was just mine, but looking around the neighborhood, they all did.

Hmm...extreme wind?

Black walnut, which like pecan is in Juglandaceae, loses all the leaves rather suddenly too. It leafs out late as well. They dont like the frost is my guess.

Tried to take a picture of the red Penstemons, its hard with the brown leaf backdrop, in a rush, with my phone camera, but you get the idea. I'd like to get a camera where I can control the focus for outdoor shots.

See they are still looking alive even though we've had several hard freezes. Last night was 22F, the day before 18.

That is a nice red on your Penstemon! Coincidentally someone posted pictures of his driveway covered in green Pecan leaves on the Carolina wildlife Facebook page. So I am not the only one finding it strange. Just saw a butterfly hanging on my oak. Question mark I think. Will see if it’s still there to take a picture, don’t think it will go anywhere in 36 degrees.