PICAYUNE — Many gardeners have been taking a look around their landscapes lately, wondering what plants they might consider planting now – or next spring – to provide a reliable late-season show in their home landscape. The Arboretum’s Savanna Exhibit will soon be covered in late summer and early fall-blooming native perennials such as blazing star (Liatris), red pine lily, and rough leaf sunflower (Helianthus). And while these stunning perennials may very well steal the show – and your heart – many other native plants offer excellent low-care, high-performing choices for your garden.

Take our native species of Clematis, for example. You may be familiar with the bright colors and large-flowered varieties of this popular vine, commonly in garden books and hailing from China and Japan. However, our native species, although a bit more understated, are also quite nice. In our Aquatic Exhibit, visitors will exclaim when they encounter the delicate bell-shaped lavender blooms on the Clematis crispa that twins up the trunk of a cypress tree located in the middle of the Cypress Cove deck. This vine blooms in the spring, occasionally during the summer months, and often re-blooms in the fall. From its common name of swamp leather flower, you might rightly assume that it prefers moist soils. Even under the tree canopy of the forest, this vine continues to produce blooms, although it will also grow – and have better flower production – in full sun.

Walking through our Children’s Butterfly Garden last week, I caught a whiff of sweet-smelling air and soon spotted the white flowers of sweet autumn clematis (Clematis terniflora) on a vine that was rambling through a tree at the nearby forest edge. This non-native vine is a common sight this time of the year. It seems to pop up virtually overnight, spilling its cascades of small white flowers across the tops of tall shrubs along woodland edges. Imported from Japan for its ornamental qualities, it is still sold as an ornamental in the U.S. even though it has “escaped” cultivation and is found in the eastern U.S. from Texas to Florida and Canada. Unfortunately, its aggressive nature and self-seeding habit have earned sweet autumn clematis a place on the invasive species lists of many of these states.

Although it is not yet classified as an invasive in Mississippi, sweet autumn clematis has been designated as such from Alabama to Florida, and north to New Jersey. Now that I’ve told you this, I’ll tell you that there is a closely related species which is native to the U.S.  So if you like the appearance of this vine and can visualize it rambling over your fence or trellis, consider planting Clematis virginiana instead. Known as virgin’s bower, or devil’s darning needles, this vine has a very similar appearance, and is available from mail-order nurseries, several which are noted on the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center website. A fast-grower that attracts hummingbirds and bees, the vine was used by Native Americans such as the Iroquois and Cherokee to treat a variety of ailments, however, all parts of the plant are poisonous.

Another late-season stunner for the garden is Muhly grass, also known as Gulf muhly or hair grass. It has breathtakingly beautiful, feathery purple-pink spikes that appear in October. Find a photo on the Web if you are not familiar with it, as it truly is a show-stopper. It is attractive in combination with flat-topped perennials such as blackeyed Susan and purple coneflower. Muhly grass is found in dry, sandy, and exposed sites, as well as in wet savannas and marshes, making it a good choice for a site with poor soils, or for the meadow or xeriscape garden. It is tolerant of salt spray and to deer browsing. According to the www.floridata.com website (one of my personal favorites for thorough plant profiles including landscape usage), muhly grass is used to make the popular sweetgrass baskets woven in South Carolina.

I received a pleasant surprise when researching how muhly grass (Muhlenbergia capillaries) was named. The websites of the Florida Native Plant Society (www.fnps.org) and the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center’s native plant database (www.wildflower.org) reported that this native grass was named for Henry Muhlenberg (1753-1815), who was a gifted botanist, chemist, and mineralogist. Now, that’s a combination of talents! Muhlenberg was also the first president of Franklin College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which later became Franklin and Marshall College. Coincidentally, this was the school that my father, also a chemist, attended. It was also the city where he was born and raised. Muhlenberg was considered America’s first outstanding botanist due to his publication of a book in 1785 that classified and named 150 species of plants, and his collaboration with European botanists.

A 2010 article on muhly grass that appeared in the Florida publication the Cape-Coral Daily-Breeze stated that Muhlenberg was given seeds for this grass by Meriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark. These seeds were discovered on their famous expedition and later fondly grown by Muhlenburg in his garden. Two years after Muhlenburg died in 1815, his book of American grasses was released.    

To learn more about late-season perennials, as well as what is currently putting on a summer show at the Arboretum, come out for a summer field walk on Saturday, August 25 from 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. We will talk about methods for identifying native plants and how you can use them in your home landscape. The walk is free to members and $5 to non-members.

Reserve your space for these upcoming programs by calling the Arboretum office at (601) 799-2311. For more information visit our website at www.crosbyarboretum.msstate.edu. We are open Wednesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and are located in Picayune, off I-59 Exit 4, at 370 Ridge Road (south of Walmart and adjacent to I-59).



For further exploration:

Look on an Internet search engine to see where muhly grass is native in the U.S. Visit a website such as www.southeasternflora.com to learn the difference between the native virgin’s bower (Clematis viriginana) and the sweet autumn clematis (Clematis terniflora).