I have long loved the Liatris sparklers that burn bright in the garden. They erupt throughout summer, the earliest species starting their floral celebration around the 4th of July here in east Texas.
While I grew up in the eastern part of the country with Liatris spicata (dense blazing star), Liatris pycnostachya (prairie blazing star) has become one of my favorite species. It hugs the line of the prairie states north, and we have used it predominantly in our naturalistic plantings in the Plantery where it thrives in the heat and drought. We planted a river of them in front of the agriculture building to capitalize on their massed effect, the purple batons standing stolid in a sea of grasses and perennials (header image).
I delight seeing the creatures that visit prairie blazing star, but sometimes they turn into a meal! A green anole waits for unsuspecting prey to visit this Liatris pycnostachya.
Even before a plant blooms, it is lovely as its spirals upward, the thin foliage looking like swirling sea anemones. One wonders about a plant that evolved to rise toward sky with a single stalk, likely for piercing the dense foliage of the prairie.
In an interesting twist, most spike-like emergents are indeterminate, meaning they begin flowering at the bottom of the inflorescence (think Baptisia, Gladiolus, or Physostegia) when the final flower on a stem is not yet fully formed. However, Liatris have a determinate inflorescence, meaning the plants begin flowering at the apex once all the buds are formed, and like a sparkler the blooms are lit from the top and blaze toward the base.
The transition zone on Liatris pycnostachya where the flowers shift from being open at the top and more in bud at the bottom. You can also see the individual star-shaped flowers that give the plant its common name.
It is true that some stems will lodge after bloom, usually falling from one of those afternoon popup thunderstorms that we so hope for in the dry days of late summer. We will cut back the ones that flop after they finish flowering; however, I try to leave the uprights into the fall. Once the seed mature, they have wonderful lasting qualities in the garden and glow against the lowing sun.
Liatris pycnostachya bending and twisting like pipe cleaner in the Lurie Garden in downtown Chicago. Should they become less upright, they tend to correct and reorient upward.
Liatris pycnostachya persists into the late fall. Here the linear architecture pops against Muhlenbergia capillaris ‘White Cloud’.
And, prairie blazing star sets copious seed. They glide a short distance away with their feathery pappi, and the tiny spears appear next spring. While plants return year after year from a knotty corm, we find hundreds of seedlings the following season that look like weedy grass. They are hard to pull for knowing what they will become. Thus, we straddle the line by leaving a few and pulling the rest. That way the bed doesn’t look too untidy, and we welcome more floral fireworks for the summer garden.