My earliest memories of Joe-Pye-Weed are from the coastal town in MA where I grew up. In late summer the purple flowers towered over other plants growing wild in what we then called swamps. I would bicycle down the country lane and cut stems of the flowers to make dried flower arrangements. Joe-Pye-Weed was likely named for Joseph Shauquethqueat, a Mohican medicine man who cured settlers.
Although the plants are found throughout the East Coast on moist sites, they can tolerate drought conditions. For this reason, they make a good addition to our landscapes. A myriad of hybrids is available for this popular genus. Formally known as part of the genus Eupatorium, botanists have recently reclassified this group into a distinct genus, Eutrochium.
One hybrid has been bred to grow only 3 feet tall. They can grow in part shade and look more robust with regular watering. If the intention is to encourage them to be drought-tolerant, plant them in lots of compost. After three years divide the plants. They will ocassionally reseed, mostly they spread slowly from the crown.
The 6 ft tall hybrid plants I have were divided from a friend’s clump. The hollow stems are a deep purple and after the perennial is finished for the season, these stems make excellent disposable tubes for Mason bee homes!
Landscape uses:
Consider this for outside the deer fence. Eupatorium works well with Miscanthus, perennial sunflower and cardoon for a dramatic late summer perennial display. After growing vigorously in spring and summer, they come into their own in August and September. Rain gardens need plants that can withstand inudated soils.
Other Uses
If you raise mason bees, see my earlier post, then the dried stems of this plant make great disposable nesting tubes for the mothers to lay their brood.The right photo shows the Joe-Pye stems on left and the purchased tubes on right.
When I would help Tinker in her garden, often she dug up dandelion plants as if they were precious. The roasted roots made a delicious tea that she savored. Imagine if the plants we detested somehow changed in our mind to become useful resources. So much in life is how we frame something. If we look at a weed and notice a couple insect pollinators insects sipping the nectar, maybe the ‘weed’ isn’t so bad. That doesn’t mean we have to keep the plant. I have had weeds that I once hated and then learned to accept them, even as I removed them.
Gardeners who take the time to identify the plant can be more effective. Knowing a plant lets you determine the best way to control it. Sometimes a weed can be an indicator of environmental conditions: the soil is wet or heavy, or it is very acidic. Some tough weeds will die out if the roots don’t get nutrients from foliage. This requires diligence—regular weed-eating. Small, less-hardy weeds will die from deep mulch that smothers small plants and suppresses weed seeds. Proper ID is key to control.
Weed Identification
Botanical identification begins with a plant’s flower. We can’t rely on the foliage because weeds are by their nature adaptable and have a lot of variety. Vegetative characteristics are malleable. Here’s a short digression: years ago I managed the UCSC agroecology program greenhouse and was responsible for transplanting seedlings. In wood flats full of vegetables or flowers that required pricking out, there would be a number of weed seedlings from the compost. The young weeds could look almost identical to the some of the crops—so much so, that a number of the apprentices I supervised would pot up the weed seedlings! So identify your weed when it is flowering and then start to recognize the plant in all its stages, from young seedling to flowerings going to seed.
I’m old-school and like books. My favorite book for weed identification is Weeds of the West, University of Wyoming Press. Our cooperative Extension had it for sale decades ago. Now it can be downloaded for free from the website or used books can be found online. 900 color photos include the weed at young stages.
Online resources include Hortsense from Washington State University, with 90 fact sheets listed by alphabetical order. University of California, Davis has a useful online weed identification key
Weed Ecology
Many weeds are species that have adapted to colonize disturbed sites, such as landslides; after a wildfire has burned off vegetation; along roadsides; or at building sites where excavators have exposed mineral soil. Alan Chadwick, the famous gardener who developed the French-Intensive-Biodynamic method, always said nature abhors a vacuum. That’s why in my garden I sprinkle around borage, red clover, phacelia, or calendula. By regularly weeding out unwanted plants, I have mostly replaced the disturbed areas with annual flowers that are easy to pull and have many benefits. There’s not much room for weeds.
Weeding Techniques
Start weeding early spring, when the ground is still moist and the plants are young. Weed annual gardens regularly. Use lots of mulch around perennials and woody plants. Since weed seeds can remain dormant for decades, it’s important not to let weeds good to seed.
Certain perennial weeds can become one’s nemesis, for example horsetail, bindweed,Canada thistle . If you do nothing else, make sure to cut flower heads before they go to seed, bag them and send to the dump. The county noxious weed board doesn’t want what the state includes as noxious plants in our yard waste. If you cut the flower or seed heads and bag them, then the rest of the material is yard waste and can go to the compost facility. Thick mulch prevents seeds from sprouting. Everyday weeds can go into yard-waste. I have a big pile of plant debris that I will not use as compost, but will let it rot in place. In it I include weeds that have gone to seed but are not listed as noxious.
At one time I added woody plant material to this pile, but now wild roses, native blackberries and branches from hedges and ornamental shrubs go to yard waste. I don’t want excess fuel for potential wild fires.
If you are still using herbicide on weeds in pavement cracks or gravel, please consider a vinegar solution. Horticultural vinegar—at 35% strength is a lot stronger than kitchen vinegar—5% sold at grocery stores, so take more precautions! Wear gloves, glasses and long clothing. Although flame torches are used in agriculture to control weeds ( by boiling the sap, not turning foliage black), when I called our fire dept about using them for weeds in cracks I was informed that we had two wildfires in the county start that way!
For woody plants or deep-rooted perennials, such as Scotch broom, Himalayan blackberry, and poison hemlock, a weed wrench can be used to yank out the entire plant. The county weed board has wrenches they loan out.
A lot of weeds are my friends. I make flower bouquets, or add them to salads. Others are a haven for pollinators. Some are good sources of carbon for my compost piles.
My attitude about growing flowers changed the day I visited my friend Renee at her cabin in the Santa Cruz mountains, California. At the time I was a twenty-three-year-old horticulture student. I sat at her kitchen table, eyeing the room, when I noticed a bouquet on the kitchen table.
It was an arrangement of fragrant flowers with lavender, roses, delphinium, and baby’s breath. My internal dialog commented, “Oh those are probably from the UC Santa Cruz Farm and Garden.” It was a dismissive thought. You can’t eat them, what’s the point.
Then it dawned on me—I had picked those flowers and arranged this very bouquet, just two weeks before. My sister was then apprenticing at UCSC Farm and had invited me to gather a bouquet for Renee, a new mother. Stunned, I saw my bias. Flowers seemed frivolous, when I was on the revolutionary-edge of organic food growing in 1980.
That was the incident that changed my life, it was okay to love flowers as I always had. After getting my Horticulture degree, I apprenticed at Camp Joy in Boulder Creek, CA. I learned to sow seeds in wood flats; tend young seedlings in the greenhouse; and plant them in double-dug raised beds.
Twice a week, before the sun rose over the mountain ridge, we harvested flowers and placed them in large tin cans in the shade of the gazebo. I was taught that the key to selecting young flowers was in the reproductive parts. I became skilled at noting if a flower’s stamens were moist with fresh pollen or not. Daisy-like flowers, with their disk and ray flowers were easy, once the secret was revealed. Bending down to look closely at the yellow center one could see if the rings of tiny flower parts were all open, if so then the flower was old. But if just a couple of outer rings of disk flowers were open, it was prime for harvesting.
The day I purchased my 20-magnification hand lens, the world of insects opened up. Looking through this loupe was like landing on a planet. By placing the lens close to my face, my hand on my cheek bone to steady the lens, I moved in close, a spaceship landing on a miniature floral world. The intricate textures of leaves, flowers and seeds were mesmerizing. I peered deeply into a flower chamber, translucent in color, while male and female flower parts became giant. I imagined myself a tiny creature crawling over these exquisite sculptures.
Honey bees on Phacelia
I had to study insects in the horticulture program, after all the little buggers ate our crops. But we also learned of beneficial insects–predators and pollinators. There was humor in considering the caterpillar as a juvenile delinquent chomping on the parsley leaves, but then when the caterpillar metamorphosed into the Swallow-tail Butterfly, it pollinated flowers like a mature, contributing citizen.
Getting to know insects became part of understanding the garden ecosystem. Like a bird-enthusiast with binoculars, I sought insects with my lens. This requires patience! At first recognizing the different creatures based on their anatomy—wings and mouth parts being essential clues, eventually I moved on to noting their behavior.
Over the years I have watched green lacewings laying eggs; each on a solitary stalk. These predators are so voracious, the emerging young would eat the surrounding eggs if they were not out of the way. Also, I have seen lady bug larvae that look like giant Gila monsters gobbling up aphids. And no lie, I have watched aphids pop out live babies.
Learning about pollinators in my backyard offered me the chance to slow down, and become curious. Did you know that a butterfly can taste with its feet? That when it lands on a petal that has nectar-bearing flowers that its siphon-like tongue unfurls? I have seen this. It takes patience, but watching insects is a form of miniature wildlife viewing.
Bees can see colors invisible to the human eye. Foxglove flowers have ultraviolet circles around maroon spots, marking a trail to lure pollinators deep into the trumpet bloom where a reward of pollen and nectar await.
The honey bee is but one of many kinds of bee. Native to the Mediterranean, and introduced around the world, it is a generalist, pollinating many flowers. And yet, it shares a characteristic with all bees that make them the premiere partner for flower pollination—floral fidelity. This means on any given foraging trip they only gather pollen from one species. Efficient for the insect and fundamental for the plant to produce seed, bees are the most important group of insects.
Scientists now know that bees are a keystone species–creatures necessary for the survival of other organisms in an ecosystem. Keystone species are referred to as the glue that holds a system together–without them an ecosystem may not be resilient enough to adapt to climate change. There are native flowers that depend on one or two types of bee to pollinate them.
Also, bees and other pollinators are responsible for food crop pollination. According to the USDA, bees, both honey and native are responsible for the pollination of 75 percent of fruits, vegetables, and nuts in this country. Another way to look at it is one out of every four bites of food can be traced back to pollinator services.
Jim Nelson at Camp Joy, a beekeeper, told me something I never forgot. “Imagine yourself tiny, the size a bee. As you approach a flat-topped white yarrow, a Sedum Autumn Joy, or a sunflower, you would see an entire field of flowers.” A bee’s-eye view of the world makes me want to plant these flowers and patiently watch the insects that come foraging.
Sustainable Garden Design 