Prairie smoke

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.

A drought-hardy western-native subshrub (long known as Zauschneria) that lights up dry, rocky ground with scarlet tubular flowers from midsummer until frost - exactly when migrating and resident hummingbirds need a late-season nectar source. Slender, highly-branched stems carry small grey-green lance-shaped leaves; the whole plant thrives on full sun, lean soil, and very little water once established.

A spring-blooming native bulb of the moist meadows of the Pacific Northwest and northern Rockies, common camas sends up a 2-3 foot scape lined with dozens of star-shaped blue-violet florets that open from the bottom up over basal grass-like leaves. It is the camas whose bulb was a staple food of Indigenous peoples across its range - the genus name comes from the Native American "kamas"/"quamash". The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center flags it as a plant of special value to native bees.

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 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.

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.