Anise hyssop

A drought-and-flood-tolerant native shrub of eastern North America with brilliant three-season interest - spring white-pink flowers, glossy black antioxidant-rich late-summer berries, and brilliant wine-red fall foliage - plus an extraordinarily wide cold-hardiness range (USDA 3a-8b). The berries are astringent fresh but the basis of a small but growing commercial industry (juices, wines, jams, supplements) for their exceptionally high anthocyanin content. Spreads by suckers; site where colony formation is welcome.

A short-lived native perennial of wet woodland edges, stream banks, and ditches across the Americas, named for the brilliant scarlet-red flowers that rise on erect, unbranched terminal spikes from mid-to-late summer. Each tubular, two-lipped bloom is shaped for the hummingbird tongue - the plant depends on ruby-throated hummingbirds for pollination because most insects cannot work the long flower tube. It demands constant moisture and tolerates brief flooding, but its foliage carries alkaloids that are very toxic to humans if eaten.

A native upright perennial of central + eastern North American prairies, woodland margins, and open woods producing tall vertical spires of white tubular flowers in late spring. The species name "digitalis" honors a flower-shape resemblance to true foxglove (Digitalis purpurea) - but Penstemon digitalis is NOT toxic in the same way (NC State explicit: "lacks the toxicity associated with foxglove"). Specialist Penstemon mason bee (Osmia distincta) relationship per NC State. The popular 'Husker Red' cultivar adds burgundy foliage for foliage-color design.

A clump-forming native perennial of the carrot family that opens flat-topped, compound umbels of tiny golden-yellow flowers in late spring, when little else is blooming. The toothed, twice-divided-in-threes (biternate) foliage and the bare central flower stalk on each umbel set it apart from other umbellifers. A documented larval host for the black swallowtail and an early-season nectar and pollen source for short-tongued native bees.

A more refined garden-behaved cousin of common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) - same monarch host status and ecological value, but clumping rather than aggressively spreading, well-suited to rain gardens and consistently moist sites. Pink fragrant flower clusters from mid-summer through early fall; 2005 NC Wildflower of the Year. NC State tags Poisonous (cardiac glycosides) - the same toxicity that makes monarch caterpillars unpalatable to vertebrate predators.

Whorled milkweed (Asclepias verticillata) is the slenderest and most drought-tolerant of the common native milkweeds, a fine-textured perennial of prairies, glades, and dry open ground across most of central and eastern North America. It grows 12 to 24 inches tall on wiry unbranched stems clothed in narrow, needle-like leaves set in whorls, and carries small umbels of greenish-white flowers from midsummer into early fall, later than most milkweeds. Like all Asclepias it is a monarch host plant, and its late nectar feeds bees and butterflies when little else is flowering. It wants full sun and lean, dry soil, and it is tougher and less bulky than common milkweed, though it spreads by rhizome and can form a wandering colony on good ground. All parts are toxic, and whorled milkweed is one of the more poisonous milkweeds to grazing livestock, so keep it out of pastures and hayfields.