Tiny pinks on long stems. This mallow started life in out garden as a tiny free specimen. I put it in a planter and it thrived. Moved it into the ground and it nearly died. It is in a large planter, soil mixed with sand, and it is happy once again. It is a bee favorite & common on the Coast.
I hope you know what plant that is without the ID below it: run into this without enough clothes on and you’ll wish you had never met it. I crawled into it once when I was a child. Nettle stings all over my face! Fortunately, the damage is never serious and the sting can be dealt with (in my case, I probably smeared mud all over my face. I was a clever child – HA!). I started growing it for the medicinal benefits of nettle tea. It is in a pot so it doesn’t escape into the yard and I deadhead the flowers before they produce seeds: this is all the nettle I need in my yard. Harvest with care: garden gloves, long sleeves. I dry the leaves in the dehydrator instead of hanging them to dry. I’ve read you can cook the leaves as a spinach substitute (I’m not fond of cooked spinach except on pizza). The leaves lose their sting when dry. I mix the leaves with feverfew and yarrow for a green tea that I can drink without sweetener.
Nettle may lower your blood pressure, help with blood sugar, hay fever, reduce inflammation, and help with enlarged prostate, and contains antioxidants and many vitamins. (I may write more on nettle in another post on herbs in the future.)
Wild irises.
I love irises! These are my wild native irises (I have “domestic” irises as well). The first two iridacea shown love moist soil and are planted in a little shady swale next to the south fence of our yard along with the camassia. I need to divide the flag iris this fall. The Douglas iris is more like its commercial counterparts: dry soil is fine. They love sunshine. The blooms are larger than the flag iris but still delicate.
Wild camas (which is related to asparagus) is a beloved forage plant for the Indigenous peoples of the PNW. I loves marshy areas. I have not tried eating it: I have too few of the plants to forage just yet.
My husband brought me a gift of bear grass one year along with the deer ferns. Falso Solomon’s seal hitched a ride. My bear grass has never failed to bloom: the spikes tower above the heavy leaves. I think one of my plants is showing its age and beginning to die out, but it produced three beautiful spikes of flowers this year. And the false Solomon’s seal never disappoints, but it is gone by summer and the ground bare where it flourished in the wet of spring.
This beautiful ground cover was also a hitch hiker. I think it came with the yew and maple (long gone now). It spreads quickly, covers the ground beautifully, and attracts every bee, bee fly, and wasp. It greens up in the Autumn, overwinters green, and blooms in the spring – and then it is gone. The ground bare.
I have not tried too many other plants mixed in with the false Solomon’s seal to cover the bare spot in summer, but I have tried where the meadowfoam is. And meadowfoam does not like to be shaded out during the dormant stage! The bare spots in the photo are where i removed plants that shaded out the meadowfoam and it died back. However… it seems to love peonies and grows profusely around them despite the shade of summer, so I may try putting a couple peonies in there.
Don dug this out of a bar pit one year. he intended to make it into a Bonsai tree, but vane maple grows too quickly and he had to put it into the ground. It is as large as it is ever going to get. The leaves turn brilliant red in the autumn. The squirrels love the helicopter seeds. Very little grows under it but I am hoping some huechera (coral bells) will take off.
Milkweed. I could write a blog post on this, the last of my Natives to show off. I planted it by seed: two kinds of native milkweeds, the showy (pink flowers) and a few of the narrowleaf. They didn’t grow. Well, to heck with that idea, right? I could purchase some starts but it just never seemed to happen. And four years after I tossed those seeds in the garden, I had a thick stem poking out of the ground. Suspicious, I broke a leaf off and watched as it oozed thick milky sap. Eureka! It only took four years for those seeds to grow! And grow they did: I now have to fight the plants to keep them contained in the corner of garden where I planted them: milkweed spreads by runners underground.
Bees, flies, butterflies (but never Monarchs – so far), and milkweed beetles love the plants. Invasive as the plant is, it grows well in the little corner of yard where it is, sharing space with peonies, asters, Voodoo lilies, and grape hyacinth. The hyacinth blooms first, then the peonies, followed by the voodoo lily. The milkweed rises up and blooms, fades and dies, and the asters bloom. A perfect full summer garden of bloom.
That is it for my native plants! My next posts will be about herbs in the garden, uses, recipes, and cautions. I’m excited for those posts!
Jaci Dawn 