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 Its
abundance of purple flowers, interesting foliage, and long season of
blooms combine to make it an ideal perennial for many garden
settings.
An unfamiliar native
Several years ago, my wife brought this plant home from a local
nursery after recognizing it was a native species and admiring its
floriferous display. Even as a tiny potted plant, it had a canopy of
purple blooms, drawing attention and providing a hint of its
season-long beauty.
Being a somewhat rare native plant in Illinois, I had not observed
it in the wild or knew much about it at all, but I was excited to
try a new native in our garden space. At the time, we had just
expanded a bed near our driveway, and there was ample space for new
plants. So, we planted front and center, in a place where we passed
daily.
Over the first few growing seasons, I just couldn’t stop admiring it
and probably asked my wife a dozen times to remind me the name of
this spectacular little plant. It almost became a joke asking,
“What’s that new native by the driveway?”.
How it fits in the garden
Beyond its numerous flowers, I’ve enjoyed this plant due to its
compact size. It rarely reaches much over one foot tall, even when
you account for the clusters of blooms that extend above the canopy
of creeping foliage. It’s a great plant for the front edge of a bed
or along a rock wall. I’ve seen it used as a stand-alone ground
cover in some settings, creating a carpet of purple-pink blooms.
Rose vervain is a sprawling plant with lower stems that stretch out
horizontally, forming roots where nodes touch the soil. I really
like this growth habit, as the darker green, low-growing foliage
nicely frames the flower clusters that extend upward.
It does spread to form a patch, but its growth can easily be
contained by hand pulling the edges in spring or simply digging up
and transplanting the stems near the edge. Although it roots via the
nodes, stems at the edge of the patch are shallowly rooted and can
be pulled or transplanted easily. In our garden, it's not an
aggressively spreading plant that threatens its neighbors, but
rather, it quietly fills its space and blocks out weeds. [to top of second
column] |
Flowers emerge in a dome-shaped structure and
gradually expand to a flat-topped cluster at the upper tips of
stems. The tubular flowers remind me of woodland phlox in both shape
and color, although rose vervain is pinker than the light purple of
phlox. They both seem to start their bloom period around the same
time each spring. Throughout summer, the blooms on rose vervain wane
a bit and become sparser but it continues well into the heat of
August, with some lingering flowers later in the season.
A favorite of pollinators
The flowers are attractive to butterflies, skippers, and
long-tongued bees seeking nectar. Since it does take some
specialization to reach the nectaries deep in each flower's tubular
corolla, this isn’t a plant that is swarming with pollinator
activity, but it does draw notable attention from butterflies.
Rose vervain is quite adaptable, flourishing in full sun but
certainly tolerant of some shade. It’s a low-maintenance plant,
thriving in dry conditions and adaptable to poor soil. In nature, it
occurs in prairies, glades, and along rocky bluffs, gaining a
competitive advantage in dry locations with low fertility.
Locally, I’ve observed this plant at the Loda Prairie in Iroquois
County, which is a high-quality remnant prairie with excellent soil.
It's truly an adaptable species, tolerating some shade as a
low-growing plant in dense prairies like Loda. Poor drainage or full
shade are perhaps its only weaknesses.
If you are looking for a new pop of low-growing color in your
garden, consider adding rose vervain. While it's not as common as
some in the garden center, it’s a pleasant surprise if you can find
it, and it will certainly perform well in the garden.
[SOURCE/WRITER: Ryan Pankau,
Horticulture Educator, Illinois Extension]
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