Blue lobelia and cardinal flower are an easy plant to grow in the rain garden. Lobelias are a good starter plant for instant gratification the first year. The flower heads can be cut back after the bloom to keep a nice tidy look. Lobelias grow easily from seed and can fill in hard to reach muddy spots in the center of the garden. They look great growing among sedges or rushes. Their blue and red blooms are a perfect complement to the many yellows blooming in late summer.   Blue lobelia, Lobelia siphilitica , grows well in wet areas of the garden in full sun. It can tolerate part shade and medium garden soil. Most leaves are at the base but it will send up a 3 ft tall flower stalk. It blooms in various shades of blue July to September. Blue lobelia will tolerate deer, heavy shade, and wet soil. Provides late summer bloom to the perennial border, wild garden, native plant garden, woodland garden or naturalized planting. Also effective near ponds or streams.   Red Lobelia, also known as cardinal flower, Lobelia cardinalis , grows well in wet areas of the garden in full sun. It can tolerate part shade and medium garden soil. The flower spike can reach 4 ft tall, blooming scarlet red, white or rose in July to September. Cardinal flower adds late summer bloom and height to raingardens, wet meadows, along streams or ponds, and gardens as long as soils are kept uniformly moist. It will tolerate rabbit and deer.   Lobelias, especially cardinal flower can be short lived plants. They are easy to propagate from seeds, so plan to collect some seeds each year to grow more plants and keep your population thriving. Collect lobelia seeds as soon as the seed stalks dry. The seeds are a dark brown dust and are easily blown away and lost. I like to tip the seed stalk over into a white bucket and tap out the seeds. Dropping them into a white container helps to see how many have been collected. Lobelia seeds can be kept with some damp soil in the fridge over the winter to sow in trays in the spring. Or the seeds can be directly sown onto the garden by sprinkling the seeds over the soil. Because the plants grow in wet areas the seeds will move with the water so I plant them slightly uphill from where I want them to grow.   Lobelia flowers are very attractive to butterflies and hummingbirds. It looks great to plant the various colors of lobelia together creating a color variation ranging through white, pink, red, magenta, purple, blue, and light blue. The hues of color come from genetic variation and can pass on that particular shade to their offspring. Blue lobelias, especially, come in a wide range of shades of blue, purple, and white.

As a kid, there was a mulberry tree down the street that I would religiously check for fruit in the early days of summer. It had many low branches so I could climb it to collect a bucket full. If I didn’t eat all the fruit and brought some home, my mom would make mulberry cobbler served with ice cream. The delayed reward was always a challenge for me when the berries were so juicy it was hard to avoid eating them all in the tree. As an adult, I still love mulberries. Many of our parks have mulberry trees and it is a joy to bike around looking for fruit. It is easy to spot the mulberry tree along the bike trail because of the purple stain on the ground. When mulberry picking it is difficult to avoid ending up with purple fingers. I have heard that mulberry juice stain can be removed from the fingers by rubbing an unripe mulberry on them. However, I enjoy having purple fingers to remind me of the treats of summer. Our native mulberry,  Morus rubra , commonly known as red mulberry, is a stout tree that grows up to 60’ tall. “In Missouri, it typically occurs in woodlands, rocky places, pastures, fields and along roads throughout the state” (Steyermark). The early-maturing fruits of the mulberries are an important source of food to many kinds of birds. The Wood Duck, Catbird, Eastern Kingbird, Great Crested Flycatcher, Robin, Starling, and Baltimore Oriole all enjoy mulberry. Mulberry trees seem to fruit so prolifically that there are always plenty of berries left even with large flocks visiting. Not all mulberries are the same. The white mulberry, Morus alba , was introduced to the area as part of the silk trade, to feed the caterpillars. Now it is a listed Midwest Noxious Weed. The paper mulberry, Broussonetia papyrifera , is also an invasive plant. If your yard came with a mulberry, you may want to find out if it is the native or should be removed. A down side of urban mulberries is the purple bird poop on the car.

A colony of bumblebees have moved into an old bluebird house. At first, I noticed that there always seemed to be a bee sitting on top of the box watching me while I gardened. Then I started noticing bees flying in and out of the hole to visit the near by patch of flowers. Sometimes I would get swooped by a fuzzy bee if I was weeding around the base of their home but they never bothered me. Until the day I wanted to show the bees to a friend. There weren’t any bees outside the box so I decided to poke it with a stick. You should never poke bees with a stick! The bumblebees started climbing out of their front door, maybe 10 of them, and flying around. Everyone backed up, except my friend, who got closer “I think those are brown belted bumblebees, I want a photo.” After he got his photo, he turned around and then I saw a bumblebee attached to his forehead, stinger in. I went and got the antihistamines but he was mostly worried about if the bee had been injured. It turns out bumblebees have smooth stingers so they can sting without ripping their stinger out. My poor friend had a nice swollen spot between the eyes after that. So, I will try once again to resist the urge to poke things with a stick. Bumblebees can form colonies or live solo lives depending on the species. They mostly nest in the soil but can also nest in abandoned nests of rodent or birds. Holes in the gar-den soil may indicate a nest site where bees are laying eggs and provisioning the nest to hatch a new generation. Queens hibernate over winter and then select a nesting area. The colony gradually forms over the summer until the queen dies. All of her children disperse to mate and find hibernation spots. If the old nest is used again the following year it will be because a new queen has found it. Bee nests should be marked off to decrease disturbance and also prevent friends from being stung. Bumblebees are usually very docile flying teddy bears unless they feel threatened. Having a bumblebee colony in your garden is a rare treat.

Coreopsis are yellow summer bloomers. There are 6 native species of Coreopsis native to Missouri and most of them are available at garden centers that specialize in native plants. Coreopsis establish quickly and bloom the first year. They are well known for giving a reliable bloom for the first season of a new prairie planting. All coreopsis are great for attracting butterflies and bees to their flowers and many birds including gold finch to their seed heads.   Plains coreopsis, Coreopsis tinctoria , looks great in the prairie garden. Annual yellow flower with red centers bloom June to September. A delicate looking plant growing to 2 to 4 feet tall. Grows best in full sun and dry to medium soil. It will tolerate drought, clay, dry, shallow, and rocky soil. It attracts birds and butterflies and survives deer. Good plant for areas with poor, dry soils. Excellent in large plantings.   Lanceleaf coreopsis, Coreopsis lanceolata , is a perennial sprawling 1ft tall plant with 2 ft flower stalks. It has yellow blooms May to July. Coreopsis grows best in full sun and dry to medium soil. It can tolerate drought, dry, shallow, and rocky soil. It attracts butterflies and birds and survives deer. Grows well in rock gardens, meadows or prairies. This is a good plant for areas with poor, dry soils. Self-seeding tendencies may need to be kept in check to maintain a more formal appearance.   I have a swath of lancelef coeopsis across the front of my garden and it reliably attracts large flocks of golf finches each year. I love to watch them as they balance of the stems to peck out the seeds. I’m always sure to collect some seeds for myself to save for next year. I snip off the seed heads into a paper bag and then break them up after they have dried for a few weeks. The seeds do not need any special treatment and can be scattered immediately or kept dry and cool to be planted the next spring.   Coreopsis are sometimes confused with bidens which also have yellow disk blooms at the same time. Bidens are called beggars ticks which coreopsis are referred to as tick seed. However, Bidens seeds have little barbs that stick to your clothes while coreopsis do not. Coreopsis gets the name tickseed from the tinny brown seeds that are about the size and color of seed ticks.   Coreopsis fill an ecosystem role as early establishers in disturbed soils. They spread and grow easily from seeds. They bloom in the first year and produce lots of seeds. The plants are short lived but can self perpetuate with their seeds. Because of their live fast attitude they have trouble competing with some of the other prairie plants that take more time to put down big root systems. As garden plantings mature there may be less coreopsis each year.

The earliest fruit in my yard is the wild strawberry, Fragaria virginiana . Following the white blooms, I start checking my patch regularly starting on Mother’s Day. If the strawberries have yellow flowers, they are a non-native mock strawberry, Potentilla indica . The mock strawberry fruits don’t have as much flavor so I pull them out to make space for the native. Wild strawberries are small but sweet. The fragrance of the ripe fruit can lead you to them. Strawberries are the first edible fruit to ripen in May and are usually fruiting heavily in June. Collecting strawberries can be a lot of stooping and looking under leaves. Sometimes the rabbits and turtles beat me too them as they have more patience than I do. Native Americans call strawberries "oteagh-minick" (heart berry) due to their heart-shaped appearance. In 1794 Loskiel wrote that “Strawberries grow so large and in such abundance that whole plains are covered with them as with a fine scarlet cloth.” The scientific name Fragaria refers to the fragrance of the plant. Thoreau compares the smell to the “sweet scent of the earth”, the essence of spring. Wild strawberry can be used as a fast-spreading ground cover. It grows prolifically in part shade with rich soil, growing quickly with big leaves. Although the plant seems healthy, shade growth produced less flowers and fruit. To get earlier and better fruits give the plant full sun and well drained soil. These plants will have smaller leaves and spread more slowly but fruit better. When looking for strawberry to harvest in nature, check in sandy rocky areas with good sun exposure. I find them often along gravel roads that have been cut into a sandy hillside. They also grow well along the edge of driveways, roads, sidewalks, and foundations.  Wild strawberry is a rapidly spreading groundcover that grows by rhizomes. It is easy to propagate the plants by cutting off the runners and planting them into freshly cleared soil. Wild strawberry leaves are green through the winter and young strawberry leaves turn red in fall through winter. It is not often that I find enough strawberries to have a supply to cook with. Usually, I eat them all while collecting. When I do have a small abundance, I like to eat them on my cereal. If I have a large abundance, which has only happened once, I make jam. I love strawberry jam! I would like to some day make dehydrated strawberries, maybe this spring I will give it a try.

There are two species of golden Alexander commonly found in garden centers. The common golden Alexander, Zizia aurea , and the less common heart leaved golden Alexander, Zizia aptera . The difference between the two is that aptera has compound leaves at the base while aurea has simple basal leaves. Aurea also prefers drier soils. Zizia is in the carrot family which includes dill, parsley, carrot, celery, fennel, and cilantro.   Shade gardens are a common place to find golden Alexander. In the wild they are common in moist rich woodlands, bottomland forests, mesic upland forests, upland prairies, glades, savannas, banks of streams, rivers, and spring, ledges, tops of bluffs, fens, but also along roadsides. Moist rich soil is best but they are very resilient and can survive harsh conditions. In ideal conditions their 2 foot tall and wide dome of foliage is green all summer long even in drought.   They bloom yellow in spring April–June. Seeds ripen in mid summer when the seeds turn brown and easily shatter from the stalk. They and are easy to collect to share with friends. Collected seeds need to be stored in the fridge in moist soil for a minimum of two months or directly sown outside over the winter. Seeds not collected or eaten by birds are highly likely to germinate nearby. Populations of golden Alexander can spread quickly and fill in a new garden. Golden Alexander is a good choice for woodland restoration after invasive removal because of it’s prolific spread by seed and hardy nature.   The flat-topped flower clusters are visited by many bees, flies, butterflies, and other insects. Zizia is the host plant for the black swallowtail butterfly, papilo polyxenes , and for the specialist mining bee, Andrena ziziae . The golden Alexander mining bee is a tiny native bee that digs out a burrow in the soil. Look for pencil size holes in bare soil near the Zizia plant to find these fuzzy native bees provisioning their nests.   The Black Swallowtail is a large black butterfly with yellow, blue, and red markings and swallow tails. They only lay their eggs on members of the carrot family of which golden Alexander is our native representative. Females can lay 400 eggs but only about 4 of them will survive predation. Young caterpillars are black with orange spots and bumpy. Older caterpillars are black and yellow with green stripes. In Missouri black swallow tails have two generations per year in April-June and in late summer. They overwinter as a chrysalis attached to a stem. Bringing the chrysalis inside may cause it to emerge early before there is any nectar available to eat.   Golden Alexander is a great addition to any shade garden. If it becomes too aggressive, it is easy to rip out. Control it’s spread by collecting the seeds and spreading them in the back alley. I love having this plant in my yard for the beautiful flowers that attract so many pollinators and the dancing swallowtail butterflies that grow on it. It is a great plant for a beginner garden or a neglected corner.

Plant growth habits can sometimes come as a surprise. Plants may start to spread more than there is space for. How can unwanted spread be prevented? What should be mowed around, what blows in the wind, what needs competition, what will move downhill. With the numbers of native plants available in stores today, it would be impossible to list each one here but I will describe a few of the frequent offenders.   Ashy sunflower spreads into large colonies using underground runners. Since the plant is tall, it can over shadow smaller plants while also crowding them out underground. To keep this plant in check, plant it next to barriers like sidewalks or walls. Or be prepared to trench around it each year. Many sunflowers like plants in helianthus, silphium, and heliopsis have this characteristic of forming colonies by expanding their root system. Because of the spreading issue I like to add these plants after other plants have become established and staked out their own turf. The sunflowers also make nice prairie plantings when mixed in with other equally aggressive species.   Wild plum really wants to be a shrubbery. As the roots spread out, they form root sprouts that can come up over 10 feet away from the parent plant. Cutting off these sprouts often leads to even more sprouts coming up. Digging up the sprouts can damage the roots system and they often do not transplant successfully. Plant shrubs like plum, dogwood, hazelnut, willow, and sumac in areas where their root system will not be disturbed so they are less likely to produce suckers. Shrubby garden borders are great places for this type of plant.   Asters and goldenrods spread not only by spreading their roots but also by seeds. Aromatic aster is great at expanding its colony by roots while Drumund aster is better at spreading it’s seeds far and wide. Field goldenrod will send out long rope like roots and pop up a new plant every foot along it. When pulling up asters and goldenrods, make sure to dig down and get the whole root out. Seed spread can be limited by collecting the stalks before they ripen. Seeds need bare soil to germinate so minimizing bare soil near seedy plants can give them less spots to sprout. Asters and goldenrods look great in large clumps and are necessary for fall pollinators.   Joe pye makes a lot of seeds. Since it is such a tall plant, most gardeners can not work with the random volunteers of this giant plant all over the garden. Although seeds are important for birds, this is one of the plants that I dead head to prevent hours of work later weeding out the babies. After the flowers fade there is a window of time to get out in the garden and cut the seed heads off. Other plants that need their seeds clipped are rattlesnake master, and culvers roots. I like to plant these three together so I can maintain them together. Germinating seedlings should be pulled as soon as you can before they develop a deep tap root.   Blue lobelia makes thousands of dust like seeds that float on water. This means that baby blue lobelias will pop up anywhere downstream from their parent plant. The water dispersal technique is also used by many of the sedges. To prevent the spread, place these plants at the lowest point in the yard or block seed flow with a small dam. Planning for these water loving plants to move downstream can be used to your advantage by planting them upstream from where you want to planting to be densest.   Understanding how a plant will spread can be used to the gardener’s advantage when planning a garden. Plants that form colonies quickly can be given the amount of space they will need and use less plants to do it. Plants that are tall and aggressive can be paired with likeminded plants so they can keep each other in check. Very aggressive plants can be given firm borders, like sidewalks. Avoid using fertilizer on native plant beds to limit weedy growth. While this information might require some extra research, it is worth it in effort saved fighting the natural tendencies of a species with wanderlust.

The sad truth is that most stream banks in this city are dominated by bush honeysuckle. Honeysuckle is an opportunistic invader. Stream banks suffer disturbance more often with flash flooding events exacerbated by urban sprawl. After the water recedes, the honeysuckle arrives first on the scene to claim the disturbed area. The first step in removing honeysuckle is often making a path through it. Cut back branches to remove eye gougers and tripping hazards. The trees that are too big to pull out by hand, about an inch or more, can be trimmed back to a central leader. Don’t cut the big ones all the way to the ground yet, leave a sturdy trunk to help with pulling them out later. All smaller trees can be pulled out by hand. Cut enough honeysuckle to open the light to the soil. Killing all the honeysuckle first can increase erosion issues as the honeysuckle is the only thing keeping the bank in place. So next, we seed native bank stabilizing plants. If the area is shady, I recommend beak grass, river oats, and sensitive fern. These are plants that will spread rapidly to form a colony. If the area is sunny try mountain mint, fox sedge, and aromatic aster. Keep removing any baby honeysuckle that pops up for the next year or two. When the ground cover plants have established across the area, it is time to kill the big honeysuckle. The big honeysuckles can be root docked or cut and poisoned. Root docking can disturb the soil so try to keep the disturbance to a minimum and keep a continues eye out for erosion problems. The poison used for honeysuckle can have negative impacts on the stream ecosystem. Minimize any chemicals contaminating the banks by only painting the living portions of the cut with chemical and working when rain is not a threat. Once the big honeysuckle is out, it can be replaced with a native shrub. Great native plants for stream banks are gray dogwood, hazelnut, elderberry, willow, and sumac. Plant the new shrubs as soon as possible after removing the big honeysuckle. The roots from the shrubs will help control erosion by working with the groundcover to make a dense network of roots. Continue monitoring the stream bank several times a year. Baby honeysuckle will need to be pulled. Sometimes, all the disturbance from the replanting may bring in new invasives like Japanese hops or stilt grass. Stop invasives before they crowed out the natives. Soil erosion may happen and needs to be corrected right away. Checking the stream bank after every big rain is a good way to keep on top of soil washing away.

I’m excited to share that one of my clients decided to document her project clear application experience from start to finish in order help others through the grant application process. https://sites.google.com/view/bancroftgarden/   This project was designed to be a low maintenance, native plant garden in full sun. Native plants are planted to replace turf and a large rain barrel will be used to water the garden during summer droughts. This rainscaping project was fully funded by project clear because native plants absorb more rain than turf and rain barrels delay stormwater surges.   Sue’s garden is a model for an easy to install and maintain garden.  The plan is straight forward and easy to translate into another garden space. Sue would like her website resource to help others have success with their own project clear application.   I’m looking forward to following this website as the garden matures and fills in. I hope that in the future her garden will expand and she will also share that on the website.

Pemmican is a survival food used by native people and is probably the predecessor of the granola bar. The pemmican was made into bite size morsels for quick, on the trail consumption. Since people didn’t have refrigerators or microwaves it was made to be shelf stable. The main ingredients were dried meat and fat but many other ingredients were added such as dried fruits, nuts, grains, and dried herbs. I prefer my granola bars to be made of oats and chocolate so I’m glad to live in the modern age. The pemmican ingredients contained all the necessary fuel for long journeys where fats, calories, proteins, and sugars fueled the body. Unlike our current granola bar, flavor was not the main priority. If you are curious about what this fuel source tastes like, you can make some out of ingredients easily found in the back 40. If you do make this recipe, let me know how it went. I don’t hunt so I haven’t given it a try. I have heard it is not something that is easy to develop a taste for.   Pemmican recipe: Obtain 4 cups of lean deer meat, double ground. Spread it out very thin on a cookie sheet and dry at 180 degrees F for at least 8 hours or until sinewy and crispy. Pound the meat into a nearly powder consistency using a blender or other tool. Dry 3 cups of buckbrush and hackberries. Grind the dried fruit but leave a little bit lumpy for fun texture. Heat 2 cups of rendered deer fat on your stove at medium until liquid. Add liquid fat to dried meat and dried fruit, mix in 1 cup walnuts and a spoon of honey. Mix everything by hand. Let cool and store. Pemmican can keep and be consumed for several years.

When you look at the fruit of Missouri’s most common cactus, you might not think “that looks tasty”. With all the spines, cactus are well protected. But what are they so eager to protect? The red fruits of the cactus are edible, once you get past the spines. To avoid the spines, pull off the fruit with tongs. Use a skewer to hold the fruit over a flame to burn the spines off the fruit, ideally, use a campfire. When the skin is blackened and even the small hairs have burnt off, peel off the burnt skin. Now the fruit is ready to eat. I found the experience to be somewhat like eating overcooked okra because the seeds are very slimly. The fruit turns your fingers pink. It has a very sweet taste at first but with an after taste of green beans. Cactus fruit is easy to prepare if you are outdoors camping with a fire. It is kind of a mess indoors. Knowing how to eat Opuntia would be a nice survival skill. I know some people have developed a taste for Opuntia and enjoy eating it. I imagine with the right other ingredients it could be part of a delicious meal. The cactus fruits are often used to make jams and jellies. Opuntia humifusa , also known as the Eastern Prickly Pear, has large yellow flowers that bloom from May to July. The purple/red fruits ripen in late summer. The hardiness of the plant and beauty of the flowers make Opuntia a popular garden plant. It grows best in full sun and well-drained soil. This cactus is happy in a gravel filled pot growing amongst decorative rocks on a sunny front porch. It will also grow well in the gravely base of a south facing retaining wall. The cactus will remain evergreen through the winter and put on new growth in the spring. I recommend keeping it away from sidewalks or any place that children or pets play to prevent tears. The cactus has two types of prickles. The easily visible long sharp spines, but also tufts of tiny, barbed hairs called glochids. The glochids are more problematic because they are much harder to pull out of your skin and can irritate for days. Weeding around prickly pear is a dangerous chore. Plucking weeds early with long tongs is the best method I have found. Planting cactus in an area where it is less likely to be invaded by incoming seeds will prevent a lot of cursing in the future. Prickly pear is an important pollinator plant for many native bees. It is also the host plant for a few moths that need the cactus to reproduce. It is also deer resistant with those big spines. I hope we can all find a special space in our gardens for this plant or find time to pause and apricate it in the wild.

If you are ready to try something different than maple syrup and you really like that hickory smoke flavor here is a recipe for you. Shagbark Hickory Syrup is easy to make, simply collect some shagbark hickory (Carya ovata) bark chunks. Get some right off the tree so they aren’t dirty. Rinse your bark well to remove any bugs and debris. Bake the bark until it releases a smokey scent (350 degree oven for 20 mins). Put a few chunks of bark in a pot and cover with water. Simmer for 30 mins, then strain out the bark. Add sugar and dissolve it in the boiling water. Keep stirring until it has reduced by 20%. Allow to cool a little and poor the liquid into syrup jars to let it finish cooling. Hickory bark syrup can be used as a sweetener for dishes that could use a more sweet smoky flavor. It tastes great on baked squash. It can also be mixed into drinks as a simple syrup to remind you of sitting around the campfire.