clay and limestone

Welcome to Clay and Limestone's Wildflower Wednesday celebration. WW is about sharing and celebrating wildflowers from all over this great big, beautiful world. Join us on the fourth Wednesday of each month. Remember, it doesn't matter if they are in bloom or not, and, it doesn't matter if we all share the same plants. It's all about celebrating wildflowers. Please leave a comment when you add your url to Mr Linky. 

Now let's talk about the ex-asters at C and L!

If you had been here today, you would have seen the ex-asters dancing in the breeze while Bumble Bees flew from flower to flower in their mad dash to gather as much pollen as possible before the cold weather arrives.

Butterflies, Hover flies, bee mimics and even a Green Metallic bee or two were noshing on the pollen and nectar delights.

Ex-aster time is the best time to be in the garden and maybe the best time to be a bee!*

I love how fantastic these flowers can look when they are allowed to plant themselves with abandon throughout the garden. If you can go with the flow you'll be rewarded with a blue cloud of shimmering flowers that bloom until frost...But, if you need more order, they are magnificent in mixed borders.

The ex-asters planted themselves with abandon all over the garden I fell head over heals in love with the blue and lilac flowers that were all over the yard and covered with bees and butterflies when we moved into this house 26 years ago today. They so captured my heart, that I built the garden around them.

I move them around, I scatter seeds, I let the wind carry the fluffy seed head wherever it takes them and I add new species that make sense for this garden. By September Symphyotrichum shortii, S cordifolium, Eurybia divaricata, S lateriflorum and S ericoides var. ericoides, S novae-angliae, S praealtum~Miss Bessie, S oblongifolius, S patens and S priceae have spilled into the paths, crept into the wildflower beds and cozied up to the chairs and benches all over Clay and Limestone creating my dancing blue cloud and a buffet for pollinators.

Symphyotrichum is a genus of about 90 species of herbaceous annual and perennial plants that were formerly treated within the genus Aster, but, are now known officially at Clay and Limestone as the ex-asters or asters when I forget their ridiculously hard to pronounce new genus.

The ex-asters in my garden are all endemic to Middle Tennessee and grow and thrive in the shallow clay soil and semi-shady to almost full sun conditions of my Zone7 garden (formerly Zone6b). Symphyotrichum are found all over North America and there are many that will grow in your garden.  For information and help in identifying flowers you see growing in natural areas go to Image Gallery provided by the US Dept of Agriculture.  Check with your state native plant society for recommendations on where to purchase some hard to find beauties.

Trust me, they are worth the search~



Before long you'll have little ex-asters everywhere, too.

xoxogail

*The Bumble Bees, honeybees, Miner bees, and large Leaf-Cutting bees (long-tongued bees), bee flies, butterflies, and skippers that visit the flowers for nectar and pollen are essential for cross pollination or all those fluffy seeds would be infertile. So never, ever, ever, ever use pesticides, if you want pollinators to pollinate your ex-asters and other plants!

Gail Eichelberger is a gardener and therapist in Middle Tennessee. She loves wildflowers and native plants and thoroughly enjoys writing about the ones she grows at Clay and Limestone. She reminds all that the words and images are the property of the author and cannot be used without written permission.