Eastern bluestar

Appalachian-Blue Ridge forests

Arizona Mountains forests

Atlantic coastal pine barrens

Blue Mountains forests

Central Pacific Northwest coastal forests

Central Tallgrass prairie

Central-Southern Cascades Forests

What it needs

Conditions

Light

Full sun / Part shade

Water

Moderate water

Spacing

24"

Habit

Erect, clump-forming herbaceous perennial with many smooth, leafy stems that build a rounded mound; slow-growing, and it stays a clump rather than spreading

Care tips

•

Give it full sun: in shade or rich soil the stems open up and flop, as NC State Extension and the Missouri Botanical Garden both warn.

•

Cut the stems back by a third to a half after flowering for a rounder, tidier clump, as the Missouri Botanical Garden suggests.

•

Be patient with plants raised from seed: they flower in their second year.

Lifecycle

Planting

Give it average, well-drained soil that stays moist: the Missouri Botanical Garden says it prefers moist, loamy soil, and NC State Extension lists clay, loam or sand, moist to occasionally wet or occasionally dry, at neutral pH. Plant it in full sun to keep it upright; NC State and the Missouri Botanical Garden both warn that in shade the stems flop and may need staking.

Transplanting

Divide or move it in spring or fall while it is dormant, as NC State Extension advises, making sure each division has at least one eye.

Early growth

Keep it watered while it settles in: NC State Extension says it is drought tolerant once established, and the Missouri Botanical Garden that it tolerates some drought. Do not feed it hard, since the Missouri Botanical Garden warns that rich soil makes the stems open and floppy.

Maturity

NC State Extension and the Missouri Botanical Garden both give 2 to 3 feet tall and wide, and the Wildflower Center up to about 3 feet. For a rounder, neater clump, the Missouri Botanical Garden suggests cutting the stems back by a third to a half after flowering, and the Wildflower Center also says to cut it back after bloom. Both NC State and the Missouri Botanical Garden report no serious problems, though rust may occur; NC State lists the orange-shouldered sherbet moth among its common insect problems.

Propagation

NC State Extension lists division, root cuttings, seed and stem cuttings. The Wildflower Center says to collect the long, slender pods when they turn tan, four to five months after flowering, and sow the seed outdoors about 0.5 inches deep; seedlings come up at once but flower in their second year. For seed that has been stored, it advises cutting off one end and soaking it in water for 2 to 3 days. NC State suggests deadheading if you do not want self-sown seedlings.

Native range

Native

Naturalized

Native across 17 US states; naturalized in 8 US states.

Worldwide native range.

Native ecoregions

Naturally belongs in 16 ecoregions - its native range crosses a state or province each one spans (not necessarily this exact habitat).

Appalachian mixed mesophytic forests

Appalachian-Blue Ridge forests

Atlantic coastal pine barrens

Central Tallgrass prairie

Chihuahuan desert

Cross-Timbers savanna-woodland

Eastern Great Lakes lowland forests

Edwards Plateau savanna

Flint Hills tallgrass prairie

Mississippi lowland forests

A long-lived native perennial of central and eastern US woodland borders and prairie meadows with deep blue pea-shaped flowers in late spring, blue-green leguminous foliage, attractive black seed pods for winter interest, and a nitrogen-fixing root system (Fabaceae). Larval host for 6 documented butterfly species per NC State (orange sulphur, clouded sulphur, frosted elfin, eastern tailed-blue, hoary edge, wild indigo duskywing) - among the highest Lep-host-count perennials in the eastern flora.

Climate notes

•

NC State Extension and the Missouri Botanical Garden both list Amsonia tabernaemontana for USDA hardiness zones 3 to 9 (3a-9b).

•

The native range here is taken from Kew's World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP), the dataset POWO publishes: the eastern and south-central United States, in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia. WCVP also lists Nevada, far from the rest of that range, which none of the other sources here include. It records the species as introduced in Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania, and in Belarus and Italy.

•

The Wildflower Center gives the native range as Maryland and southeastern Virginia to southern Illinois and, infrequently, Kansas, south to Florida and eastern Texas, and says it has naturalized northeast as far as Massachusetts. Its state list, which records where the plant grows rather than only where it is native, also includes Connecticut, Florida, Maryland and Ohio, which WCVP does not list as native.

•

Sources describe its wild home in similar words: NC State Extension says wet, sandy, rich, open and rocky woods and thickets, the Missouri Botanical Garden moist woodlands, stream banks, slopes, ditches and open fields, and the Wildflower Center wet, sandy sites in thin woods and on plains. NC State tags it for rain gardens, and as tolerant of clay and, once established, drought.

•

Sources differ a little on when it flowers: NC State Extension says late spring in its description and April in its flower notes, the Missouri Botanical Garden May, and the Wildflower Center March to May.

Similar plants

Browse lateral options with similar roles, light needs, size, or native-range overlap; these are not filtered for a better climate fit.

Baptisia australis

Blue false indigo

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.

Full sun / Part sun / Part shade

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 bold, moisture-loving native perennial of eastern North America that dies back to a woody base each winter and returns to throw up stout 2 to 6 feet stems topped with enormous 4-8 inch saucer-shaped flowers - white, pink, red, or burgundy, each with a contrasting central eye - from June into September. NC State Extension describes a herbaceous perennial hardy across USDA zones 4a-9b that thrives in wet to constantly moist soils, tolerates heat, humidity, and even brief flooding, and draws hummingbirds, butterflies, and other pollinators. The tropical-looking dinner-plate blooms make it a dramatic focal point for rain gardens, pond edges, and the back of a sunny border. The two botanical authorities cited on this page disagree about its name: Kew's World Checklist splits it into a separate genus as Muenchhusia moscheutos, while GBIF still treats Hibiscus moscheutos as the accepted name. That split is recent and neither nurseries nor breeders have followed it, so Hibiscus moscheutos is the name used here.

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.

A native southeastern US perennial with red-and-yellow tubular flowers in upright clusters - among the most spectacular hummingbird-pollinated native perennials and a top-tier butterfly + pollinator garden plant. Shade-tolerant + clumping; slowly naturalizes by self-seeding in suitable conditions.