| Some flowers are hard work, while others are a joy. Leavenworth Eryngo is one of the least troublesome and most rewarding of all, a native American annual that will delight you with its abundant late-season purple blooms and silvery-green foliage. Growing it is a pure pleasure, and you will enjoy the fruits of your labor as everlastings for months after the growing season is past! These blooms begin in midsummer as hard, green, thistle-like nubbins carried on the top of long, very strong stems. As they mature, however, they turn lavender and then rich purple, with a merry tuft of longer petals at both the top and the bottom of each bloom (resembling tiny purple pineapples!). They make long-lasting fresh-cut flowers for the vase, and can be snipped off, turned upside-down, and hung to dry for dried flowers that will take you through winter and next spring, too! Butterflies and bees adore this plant, and later birds will come perch on the cone-like flowers and pick out seeds. Go ahead and let them; they'll drop many in the process, and these will self-sow in your sunny annual bed, guaranteeing you more Eryngo next year! Reaching 2 to 3 feet tall and spreading about a foot wide, Leavenworth Eryngo is ideal for large meadows and great drifts in the annual bed. It thrives in full sun and just about any well-drained soil. Nibbling deer leave it alone, and it comes into its full glory in late summer, just as everything else in the annual bed is giving up the ghost. What a glorious plant -- and simple to start from seed! Enjoy. Pkt is 15 seeds. |
