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What’s Blooming Now - August 22, 2009
Baby Pictures!
 It happens every year. This year, after additional milkweed was planted along the stream in the Virginia Fairbanks Sun Garden, we’re seeing even more. More baby butterflies, that is. Otherwise known as caterpillars, we’re finding Monarch babies on the milkweed. No chrysalis yet (that I could find) but caterpillars of several sizes. Look close – they like to hide during the day.
Check out the milkweed with partially eaten leaves first. You can grow milkweed in your own garden as long as you have a sunny area. The two most ornamental perennial varieties are swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) which prefers average to wet soils (pink flowers) and butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa) which prefers average to dry soils (orange flowers).
 Monarchs aren’t the only insects that appreciate milkweed. Every year there are thousands of yellow aphids  on our milkweed. Every year the milkweed doesn’t seem to mind them, and the lady beetles even like them. You may also find red and black milkweed bugs on the seed pods. These insects feed on the developing seed and do not hurt the established plants. The photo shows immature bugs – you can tell because the wings are not fully developed.
Not babies, but our bees are finding several plants to their liking. Natives are always the favorites and our tall Joe Pye weed (various Eupatorium species) always attracts them.  Look for bees throughout the Virginia Fairbanks Sun Garden, on purple coneflower, rattlesnake master and other natives. The blue mist shrub (several cultivars of Caryopteris x clandonensisis) is a personal favorite and is.jpg) also a favorite of the bees. Sometimes called blue spirea, it is one of the few woody plants to bloom late in the year. You can keep this shrub short by cutting it low every spring.
You’ll find goldfinches, too, like the natives. Always the first to find the coneflowers, they have a special treat this year. Annual sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is native to the western tall grass prairie, technically not to Indiana, but it grows well here.  You’ll find a wonderful variety with golden yellow to maroon flowers in the design gardens. Will we have seedlings next year? Not if the goldfinch can help it!
Mary Welch-Keesey
Consumer Horticulture Specialist
Purdue University
Dick Crum Resource Center
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