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| Fall blooming plants are a boon to pollinators. |
While little else is flowering in our yards and gardens as temperatures cool and the drought wears on, some wild native plants are still blooming and helping to support a myriad of insects. Some of the most important species of these fall blooming plants include Frostweed (Verbesina virginica), Poverty Weed (Baccharis neglecta), and Shrubby Boneset (Ageratina havanensis).
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| Blooming Frostweed. |
Much of the year, Frostweed goes unnoticed while it grows 5 to 8 feet tall and leafy, the top of each stalk crowned by a cluster of small white flowers. Its stalks are oddly square-like, with fleshing green flanges. Frostweed begins to bloom in the August heat, and continues until first frost, well into the fall. These flowers provide late-season nectar for many insects, including bees, beetles, flies, wasps, and even migrating hummingbirds and Monarch butterflies. It is also a host plant for Silvery Checkerspot and Bordered Patch butterflies.
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| A Monarch nectaring on Frostweed. |
Frostweed seems to be better known for its ability to produce frost flowers, a process called crystallofolia. With the first frost, the water contained in each Frostweed plant stem expands, causing the stems to crack. Via capillary action, more water is drawn through the cracks, freezes when it hits the cold air, and forms long curls of ice like petals of a flower, ribbons, or other delicate, abstract sculptures. Most often, they consist of longitudinal bands of fine ice threads at right angles to the stem. These delicate frost flowers are fleeting in nature, and can only be found in early morning, as the rising temperature quickly melts them away.
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| Frost Flowers. |
Poverty Weed, also called Roosevelt or New Deal Weed and False Willow, is a weedy, tall shrub that often grows in disturbed ground or fields out of cultivation. It has ascending branches, very narrow partly evergreen leaves, and in October and November the female plants produce inconspicuous greenish-white flowers in large clusters that together resemble silky plumes. It is precisely these flowers that provide much needed nectar for migrating Monarchs and numerous other insects every fall.
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| Blooming Poverty Weed. |
While Poverty Weed is native, it can be invasive but is extremely drought tolerant. In fact, several of its common names come from the fact that it was planted in fields as a fast and easy way to rejuvenate the severely damaged soil after the Dust Bowl and Depression period of the 1930s during the Franklin D. Roosevelt presidency.
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| A Tarantula Hawk nectaring on Poverty Weed. |
Found on the rocky hillsides and limestone bluffs at woodland edges in the southern half of the Hill Country, Shrubby Boneset is a many-branched, rounded shrub with opposite, triangular, coarsely toothed leaves. Also called White Mistflower and Havana Snakeroot, in the fall it produces prolific, long-lasting, fragrant, pinkish-white blooms occurring in fuzzy terminal clusters. These flowers attract an amazing number of pollinators, including butterflies, moths, bees, hummingbirds, and beetles.
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| Blooming Shrubby Boneset. |
Shrubby Boneset is also a host plant for Rawson’s Metalmark butterfly, and in early winter the plant’s seed clusters provide much needed food for seed-eating birds such as the Lesser Goldfinch. Long ago, the common name of ‘boneset’ was applied to various plant species that were used as treatments for broken bones and dengue fever, also known as breakbone fever.
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| A Common Mestra nectaring on Shrubby Boneset. |
Be inspired to create your own white-flowered buffet of autumn ambrosia by planting these natives in a sunny corner of your backyard. You’ll be giving a boost to many beneficial insect pollinators, and you’ll likely help a few Monachs along the way!
