More Seedy Saturdays!

Back-to-back Seedy Saturday and Sunday this weekend. We will be bringing the Beaux Arbres Native Plants line of wildflower seeds to the Ottawa Seedy Saturday at the Ron Kolbus Centre in Britannia Park on Saturday.

On Sunday, we are heading out to Perth Royal Canadian Legion Hall for the Perth Seedy Sunday. This will be our first time at the Perth Seedy Sunday and we are looking forward to meeting enthusiastic gardeners looking to help pollinators, attract hummingbirds and butterflies and add beautiful wildflowers to their gardens.

We will be promoting Wild Lupin as our Seedy Special this year. We had abundant seed set on our wild lupins last summer. This beautiful blue flower requires sandy soil and is best started from seed as it hates root disturbance and it does not like growing in pots. At one time, Wild Lupin was the host plant for the Karner Blue Butterfly, which has been extirpated from Canada. There is a captive breeding programme using stock from the population in the US which still exists, although it is threatened by habitat loss.

Blazing Stars

 

Two blazing star species in our garden are blooming now: Spike Blazing Star (Liatris spicata) and Prairie Blazing Star (L. pycnostachya).

The shorter spike blazing star was the first to bloom. We had put some spike blazing star in our tall-grass prairie planting at the base of the bank. Another name I have seen for spike blazing star in American literature is marsh blazing star, reflecting its distribution in areas with ample moisture. The base of the bank can be quite wet in spring, while the top of the bank can be very dry by mid-summer.

Spike blazing star (Liatris spicata), planted last September, starts to bloom in our tall grass planting.

Spike blazing star occurs as a wildflower in southwestern Ontario. Probably the best place to see it in the wild is Ojibway Nature Preserve in Windsor, which is where I took this photo a few years ago.

A wild stand of spike blazing star, blooming in Ojibway Prairie Nature Preserve in Windsor, Ontario.

Both species are very attractive to butterflies and large bumble bees.

White admiral on spike blazing star.

 

Summer Flowers: Swamp Milkweed

Asclepias incarnata

• Host plant for monarch butterfly caterpillars
• Nectar for many pollinators
• Fragrant pink flowers
• Does not spread by stolons, unlike common milkweed
• Likes moist to wet soil

Swamp milkweed sometimes occurs in a white-flowered form.

Swallowtail on Jacob’s ladder

I think this is a Canadian swallowtail (Papilio canadensis), (rather than an Eastern tiger swallowtail), nectaring on boreal Jacob’s ladder (Polemonium boreale) in the rock garden. Gorgeous.