Spotted Joe-Pye weed

A tall native eastern US perennial with deep purple-magenta flower clusters in late summer - among the most striking color in the native fall meadow palette. Tall and tolerant of wet feet; pairs visually with joe-pye weed + goldenrod for an iconic eastern wet-meadow trio.

A tall native perennial wildflower of moist meadows and woodland edges across eastern North America, producing large domed clusters of vanilla-scented pink-purple flowers in late summer - among the most reliable late-season nectar sources for monarchs, swallowtails, skippers, and native bees. Formerly classified as Eupatorium purpureum.

A native eastern + central North American wetland iris producing striking violet-blue flowers with yellow + white throat markings in late spring + early summer. Tolerates wet feet better than most irises - among the best perennials for rain gardens, stream edges, and pond margins. Long-lived; clumps slowly expand. ALL parts of the plant are toxic (irisin glycoside) - wildlife typically avoid it; humans + pets can experience GI distress + skin irritation from sap contact.

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.

Virginia iris (Iris virginica) is a marsh plant, and the commonest way to fail with it is to buy it as a border perennial. Missouri Botanical Garden puts it in wet, boggy, acidic, sandy soil in full sun, rates its water need medium to wet, and lists water plant, rain garden and naturalise as its uses; the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center rates water use High, soil moisture Wet, and CaCO3 tolerance LOW. Read together that is a plant which wants saturated ground or shallow standing water and dislikes lime, which is close to the inverse of an ordinary well-drained bed on builders' subsoil. Planted in one it does not die dramatically; it thins, stops flowering and fades out over three or four seasons, and the gardener concludes irises are difficult. Sited properly it is among the best things a pond margin can hold: 1 to 3 feet of bright medium-green sword foliage that often lies out over the water, and violet-blue flowers in late spring carrying a bright yellow, conspicuously HAIRY signal patch on each fall. That signal is also the field mark - Iris versicolor, its near-identical northern counterpart already in this catalog, carries a flatter greenish-yellow signal with few hairs and heavier purple veining. The reason to know this species specifically is the sibling it replaces. Iris pseudacorus, the yellow flag in this same wave and the same botanical series, is a European wetland iris that has escaped into North American marshes and is regulated as a noxious weed in several states. If you want an iris standing in water at a pond edge, this and Iris versicolor are the two answers that do not get out. Two cautions carry across the whole genus: the rhizomes contain irisin and iridin and cause vomiting and diarrhoea if eaten and dermatitis on handling, and iris borer (Macronoctua onusta) is the pest that decides whether a rhizomatous iris planting survives in eastern North America.

American beautyberry (Callicarpa americana) is a loose, open, arching deciduous shrub of the southeastern and south-central United States, grown almost entirely for one spectacular autumn trick. Through summer it is a quiet green background plant, carrying small clusters of pink-to-lilac flowers tucked into the leaf axils. Then, from late summer into fall, those clusters ripen into tight whorls of vivid magenta-purple berries that wrap right around the stems at every leaf joint, so the arching branches look strung with beads. Songbirds strip them through fall and early winter. It is an easy, fast-growing, forgiving native that asks for little: full sun to part shade, ordinary well-drained soil, and room to arch. Site it where the fall berry show can be seen, because in leaf and flower it is plain, and in fruit it is one of the most distinctive shrubs you can grow.