A wildflower Wednesday pick: Silphium perfoliatum

I planted Silphium perfoliatum (cup plant) a few years back in the pollinator-friendly planting that I call the pocket meadow.

Here's a photo from three years ago, showing a still "young" plant to the left of the ginkgo.


At the Garden Blogger's Fling in DC, I'd been amazed at the size that these plants get (my fellow Flingers also warned me of their self-sowing tendencies....)  Yikes, I thought, so I've been dead-heading them, too, and asking our summer folks to do so in the past couple of years.

Regardless, it's an impressive plant and one that I've enjoyed having, so an excellent candidate for Wildflower Wednesday.

This year, still in Asheville in mid-June, I cut it back by a half, reducing its size.  Happily, that seems to have worked nicely, so it won't loom over the front meadow quite so impressively (nor seed as profusely, either).

It's just now starting to flower.

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