Asclepias curassavica is a tender perennial that grows upright and tall with spiraling lanceolate leaves. The flowers, in small scarlet red and orange umbels, are very bright and showy, and wonderful at attracting Monarch butterflies. Blood Flower is a milkweed and thus contains a milky sap that exudes from the foliage when cut or damaged.
This native classic is best known as a food of larval monarch butterflies (along with it's siblings A. incarnata and A. tuberosa). Robust and stoloniferous with deep pink clusters of fragrant flowers in June and July, followed by lovely pods of silky seeds in October.
Many wonderful pastel pink, flat-topped flowers with black cones track the sun like sunflowers. Tennessee Coneflower is a great choice for hot dry sites that are difficult for other species. Compact, vigorous, and very floriferous.
This great floriferous and low-growing native is very attractive in the garden and in flower arrangements. Its delightful brown spherical cones are surrounded by a flowing fringe of bright yellow reflexed petals looking like hundreds of yellow skirted dancers in motion. The foliage is compact and bushy. Tolerant of a wide variety of conditions, H. flexuosum blooms from mid-summer into fall. Native from Massachusettes to Florida.