Common Evening Primrose, Poke weed, and Fleabane
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I have three plants in my yard that are native….but I didn’t plant them…and I have an evolving strategy for them. The first picture shows all three: the yellow-flowered common evening primrose in the foreground with a small poke weed between them. In the background – the white-flowered fleabane accents the yard between the patio and the pine. .
I had common evening primrose in one of my beds year before last…and it is back in that bed and beyond this year. I am letting it bloom. It is tall but sturdy enough that it remains upright. The individual blooms are fragile (heavy rain damaged the ones I photographed) but there are open flowers for pollinators longer because new buds are maturing further up the stalk - sustaining the bloom time.
Poke weed is a challenge. There are times I like the green leaves and purply pink stalk…other times they seem to crowd out other native plants that I want to thrive or they get so tall that they fall over in the next storm. Birds eat the seeds and something occasional eats the leaves…but they are not as much value to wildlife (insects, pollinators, birds) as other plants. My strategy this year has been to cut any that get too tall and leave ones that are small. Cutting has the effect of causing the plant to branch and stay low so at least they are not as dominate in the landscape as they would be without cutting. They die back to ground level in the cold but then return from the roots in the spring. Where violets are growing very densely, there are not as many poke weed so perhaps the key is to cut the poke weed repeatedly until the other native plants fill the area.
The fleabane came up in the grassy part of my yard, and I have been mowing around it. As soon as they make seeds, I will mow them. The flowers are small but butterflies, bees and moths like them. It’s great to have plenty of food for pollinators. My goal this summer it to observe when things bloom and then focus my buying of new plants on filling in the flower availability gaps for next season.
