There it was, as flashy as the seed catalog photos: meter-tall Euphorbia marginata, the striking green-and-white variegated spurge known as snow on the mountain.
But then Alan Branhagen did a double take. What was it doing in a prairie in western Iowa?
“And I was like, ‘Oh, it’s native,’” recalls Mr Branhagen, who was doing field work that summer as an intern with the Nature Conservancy.
Suddenly he registered what he saw: an annual usually associated with gardens, growing where there was no garden, but in a vast, wild place. A native plant that feels at home.
It may have been his first native annual aha moment. Since then, Mr. Branhagen, a lifelong naturalist and director of operations at the 1,200-acre Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, has encountered many other native annuals in situ.
He’s also heard stories about them – told by people like the turkey hunter who found himself in a spring forest covered with the blue-eyed Mary (Collinsia verna) and was so overwhelmed that he had to sit down to take it all in.
Mr. Branhagen has also championed the Midwestern prairie natives — as well as irresistible species from other regions — for use in gardens. Such as the exhibits at Powell Gardens, near Kansas City, Mo., where Mr. Branhagen was the director of horticulture, and at the suburban Minneapolis arboretum where he now works.
Part of the University of Minnesota, the arboretum has a strong conservation mandate and is responsible for the oldest prairie restoration in the state. So even in the most traditional display gardens of perennials and bulbs, self-seeding native annuals such as the Euphorbia are encouraged.
A role as ‘Earth Healers’
Mr. Branhagen has published two books on native native species, including “Native Plants of the Midwest: A Comprehensive Guide to the Best 500 Species for the Garden,” which includes a section on annual species.
Say the word “annual” to most gardeners and it suggests plants of subtropical origin that serve as the workhorses of summer pots and beds: the petunias, begonias and marigolds that come and go in our temperate gardens during the warmest months.
However, native annuals do so much more than just provide summer color. As Mr Branhagen put it, “Anniversaries are earth healers.”
In a natural system such as grassland or woodland, he explained, annual species are called upon to play a vital role as a first responder. “When a badger digs a hole in a prairie or if there’s a bigger disturbance,” he said, “they fill in all those holes and become the first layer of succession.”
Annuals to the rescue, covering ground. It’s no surprise, then, that while you’re transforming your lawn with native ground covers or waiting for a new pasture to fill, annuals like partridge pea (Chamaecrista fasciculata) or black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) make a great filler, as a cover crop or nurse crop. . And while they provide space for the perennials to grow, they support the food web — and look beautiful.
At Powell Gardens, lemon bergamot (Monarda citriodora), an annual relative of bee balsam with purple flowers and bracts stacked in rows, and Plains coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria) are also used as placeholders.
“For the gardener, they provide instant gratification,” said Mr Branhagen. “And everyone can see that you’re trying to do something too.”
Fleabane, Jewelweed and more
Here’s the tricky part: Most of us can’t name many annuals that are native to the regions where we garden. So homework is required – online and away from home.
Most native annuals are not the stuff of regular seed catalogs. But the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center’s website, Wildflower.org, allows you to filter native plant lists by state, then by lifespan (checking annual, biennial, or perennial).
Some native plant organizations (find one near you) have searchable plant databases that can help. Calscape, the website of the California Native Plant Society, is one such example.
And some native annuals can find you. Spotted jewelweed (Impatiens capensis), with its orange flowers, and daisy fleabane (Erigeron annuus) are two well-known examples, present in more than 40 states and much of southern Canada, according to Wildflower.org.
Yes, they are among those whose voluntary seedlings we often pluck from our gardens and consider them weeds. It is an impulse that Mr. Branhagen proposes to reconsider. Can’t we at least allow them a little real estate?
For “anyone gardening and disturbing the earth in eastern North America, the annual fleabane will rise,” he said with a laugh. “And I get people asking, ‘Should I tear that out?'”
He refutes by touting the appeal of its diminutive, yellow-centered daisies, a summer treat for beneficial insects.
Also consider using a softer hand around native Impatiens – the orange and also the yellow flowered pale jewel (Impatiens pallida).
It’s okay to edit; both varieties are prolific self-seeders in shady, moist spots. But don’t eradicate them. You may identify a garden or two where the plants can seed. And then look.
“In late summer, migrating hummingbirds will mark their territory around orange jewelweed, as if it were a hummingbird feeder,” said Mr. branhagen. The yellow species is especially attractive to native bumblebees.
You may also have confused the wild cucumber vine (Echinocystis lobata) for a weed — or even an invasive one — and rushed to pull it. You may not want it clambering up every bush, such as roadside hedges, especially at the edge of damp woods or streams. But how about having him cover a fence in the summer?
The vine has cucumber-like foliage and frothy little white flowers, followed by what look like small, spiky cucumbers. And it deserves more garden use, said Ulrich Lorimer, the director of horticulture at Native Plant Trust, in Massachusetts, who used it in “The Northeast Native Plant Primer: 235 Plants for an Earth-Friendly Garden.” (Mr. Branhagen wrote the Midwestern volume of that regional primer series.)
Bigger, bolder relatives of Daisy
Not all annual daisy relatives send small flowers like those of fleabane.
The common sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is an American classic. Nature’s way of making it was not like the domesticated cultivars with fewer, larger flowers. Instead, it’s multi-branched, with much smaller flowers — each of which makes a great cut flower, Mr Branhagen said.
Then there’s the well-known black-eyed Susan, which is even wider than jewelweed or fleabane and can behave as a biennial or short-lived perennial in some climates.
Sneezeweed (Helenium amarum) features vibrant yellow flowers on bushy, foot-tall plants with distinctive wiry foliage. It’s a candidate for hugging the edge of trails and other gravel spots, or even a rock garden, said Mr. Branhagen. This one has made its way into catalogs, as the cultivar Dakota Gold.
Lately, mr. Branhagen is also pleased that the American basket flower (Centaurea americana) is appearing in catalogs such as Select Seeds and Seed Savers Exchange. Although more common in South Central states, it is a strain he breeds and highly recommends.
Not reliably self-sowing for him year after year, Mr Branhagen starts indoors with seedlings to plug in among perennials in his 2.4 acre vegetable garden. The 10-cm fluffy lavender flowers (a white selection is now also available) have a honey scent, and their faded seed heads look good in the off-season too, he said.
Hungry goldfinches agree. And earlier in the year, the plant attracts the attention of all sorts of pollinators, from butterflies to bees.
Not native here, but irresistible
Like that snow on the mountain, there are annuals from other regions of the United States that many of us can’t help but covet.
And no wonder, if the mental image we conjure up is of a plant like the California poppy (Eschscholzia californica). Or an entire bed of it—which Mr. Branhagen creates by scattering the seeds in Minnesota’s last snow each winter, in anticipation of the vibrant orange summer blooms.
Another annual he wouldn’t miss—despite native distribution maps—is California bellflower (Phacelia campanularia), whose seeds he also sows.
Every year he looks forward to the self-seeding, warm-colored blanket flower Gaillardia pulchella, which reaches as far as Mexico.
And Palafoxia (P. callosa), native to the Texas Ozarks — a haze of tiny lavender blossoms more commonly seen in railroad tracks and other rocky spots than in American gardens, where it’s sadly little known, Mr Branhagen said.
The silver-leaved sunflower (Helianthus argophyllus) may not be native to where you live (unless you’re in South Texas or parts of North Carolina and Florida). But what a glorious garden plant it makes, with its silvery-gray, multi-branched structure supporting many golden blooms.
And what if you have your own piece of hell, a place so hot and dry that nothing will grow there? Consider Leavenworth Eryngium (E. leavenworthii), from the rocky, fast-draining prairies of the southern Great Plains.
“It’s just so shockingly beautiful, with flowers that look like metallic blue pineapples,” said Mr. branhagen. “If you could plan a hellstrip with all that heat and radiation from buildings and streets or rocks, that would be so much fun. And people would probably be too to see it.”
Margaret Roach is the creator of the website and podcast A way to gardenand a book of the same name.
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