Second Season Native Plants

It is easy to understand the wild eyed excitement over the emergence of early spring native flowers.  Seeing just which ones survived another winter is guaranteed to stoke a fire in the heart of any gardener.  By mid September, with weeds in general control, the asters spark renewed interest for many.  Literally hundreds of asters are native to North America and their proper identification is way beyond our skill set.  The first picture features an aster growing close to the edge of our driveway.  The books are off the shelf while we look for a possible name for this attractive plant.

 
New England Asters are common here as ditch weeds.  Road crews mow them down and still they  flower on stems less than one foot tall.  A group planted in front of our home tower over me.  Deer are fond of their taste and many of our cultivated plants have been deer trimmed.  My only complaint about their work is that the top of such plants are totally flat.  Some roundness on a trimmed bush can be very attractive.

This is another wild plant growing next to the lane.  Its leaves are dark green and the flowers are tiny.  We have yet to find a proper name for this plant.  Last fall we moved several asters into our garden.  We felt that controlled growth would help us identify these plants.  Unfortunately the resident deer found them and ate them.  A cage was placed to cover the remains and enough recovery followed so flowers should soon be seen.

This aster looks like a Robin's Plantain flowering way out of season.   Few of these are here and we simply must intervene and try to help it along..

Light blue petals on a newly opened flower set this plant apart from the rest.  The photo shows a leaf growing around the stem rather than just extending outward from it.  This is typical of other asters.

Here we have a wild New England Aster fighting for existence in a sea of Goldenrod.  We find this combination of colors attractive and intend to copy it in our new garden.  Since Goldenrod overwhelms all other plants, we will give the asters several years of controlled growth before we introduce the Goldenrod.  The final outcome is certain but we have a limited number of years remaining in our stewardship of this land.  We will get to enjoy the color combination with purple overwhelming yellow.

This patch of a small flowered white aster is more than holding its own.  A piece of this clump was moved into our garden last fall.  It is recovering nicely from the deer pruning and we are looking forward to see just how much new ground the transplant has claimed.  We are able to transplant native plants successfully but must then cover them with wire cages to keep hungry animals at bay.  That is a contradiction that we must simply live with.