Butterfly weed

A low, clump-forming native woodland violet of eastern North America, grown for its early spring blue-to-purple flowers with conspicuous white throats held over glossy, heart-shaped leaves. It does not run, but self-seeds freely - to the point of being weedy in rich, moist ground. A larval host for fritillary butterflies and a nectar source for early bees and butterflies; the leaves are high in vitamins A and C.

Lanceleaf coreopsis is the yellow daisy most gardeners picture when they hear coreopsis, and the fact worth leading with is lifespan. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center calls it the commonest coreopsis and easy to grow, drought tolerant, and not reliably perennial - a phrase that carries far more weight than a plant tag ever gives it. What you buy flowers hard for two or three years and then thins from the middle out. What keeps the planting going is seed: Missouri Botanical Garden records that it self-seeds freely and will naturalize into large colonies, and rates maintenance MEDIUM rather than low precisely because managing that seed is the recurring job. Everything else about it is easy. It wants dry to medium, well-drained soil in full sun, does best on poor sandy or rocky ground, and Missouri Botanical Garden records it as tolerant of heat, humidity and drought. Flowers are solitary yellow daisies 1 to 2 inches across, eight rays toothed at the tips over a flat yellow disc, from May into July, carried on slender stems above narrow hairy lance-shaped leaves that sit mostly in a basal tuft. Two decisions follow from the seeding. In a meadow, a rock garden, a prairie planting or a dry bank, let it seed and treat the stand as self-renewing rather than as individual plants. In a border, deadhead through the season and divide every two or three years, or accept that you are growing something that moves around. And know what it does where it does not belong: it is listed as an Invasive Alien Species in Japan, where the same freedom with seed has made it a serious pest.

The original black-eyed Susan - a bristly-stemmed, short-lived meadow daisy that behaves as an annual, biennial, or brief perennial depending on where it grows. It blooms hard and early from seed, then carries itself forward by reseeding rather than by spreading into a permanent clump.

A dry-country wildflower of the Intermountain West whose narrow, scarlet, tubular flowers line a slender stalk that rises about 3 feet above a low rosette of glaucous blue-green leaves. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center documents it blooming red from May into August on dry, gravelly soils, and it is one of the classic hummingbird-pollinated penstemons. Deeply drought-tolerant once established - best on lean, well-drained ground where it is not over-watered.

A native upright perennial with fragrant midsummer flower panicles in pink, white, lavender, or red - a classic border anchor and hummingbird-friendly choice for sunny beds.

Largeflower tickseed is sold as a perennial and behaves like one for about two years. Missouri Botanical Garden says plainly that the plants are somewhat short-lived and that self-seeding is what perpetuates a good planting; the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center is blunter still, recording that it is not reliably perennial and self-sows readily, becoming weedy. Those are two descriptions of the same plant, and believing them is the whole difference between a stand that lasts and an expensive annual. What you are buying is a seed-perpetuated colony rather than a long-lived clump: the original crowns thin out after two or three seasons and volunteers carry the planting on, which means it survives only where there is bare soil to germinate in and where some flowers are allowed to set seed. Deadhead every head, every year, and the colony ends when the crowns do. The flowers are the largest of the common yellow tickseeds, 2 to 3 inches across, deep yellow rays notched at the tips around a darker golden disc, held one to a stem on slender erect stalks to about 24 inches. What it wants is the opposite of border hospitality: poor sandy or rocky soil with sharp drainage, full sun, and no irrigation. Missouri Botanical Garden records it as tolerant of heat, humidity and drought and names crown rot in moist, poorly drained soil as the way it dies, so the reliable method of killing it is kindness. Within this catalog it sits between plains coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria), a true annual that never pretends otherwise, and lanceleaf coreopsis (Coreopsis lanceolata), the other short-lived perennial and the plant it is most often mislabelled as. The leaves settle it: lanceleaf carries narrow, hairy, unlobed lance-shaped leaves gathered in a basal tuft, while largeflower has lobeless linear leaves at the base and pinnatifid, deeply lobed upper leaves cut into linear segments up the stem.

A continuous-bloom native pollinator strip for eastern North America. Covers spring through frost with host + nectar plants spanning monarchs, native bees, hummingbirds, and specialist Lepidoptera. Little bluestem provides the matrix grass + Hesperiidae host.