Promoting the Use of Native Plant Species in the Home Landscape

Perennials – Sun

A perennial plant is a plant that lives for more than two years. Many perennials grow and bloom over spring and summer, die back during fall and winter, and grow again the following year from their roots. This is not the case with all perennials. Some have adapted to survive the fall and winter months without dying back to their roots.

Common Milkweed

Rounded, slightly drooping clusters of fragrant pinkish purple fragrant flowers. Clusters appear near and at the top of the stem.

Pale Purple Coneflower

Large flower heads, 3-5" wide, made up of 14-20 droopy lavender to white petals that surround a spiny cone-shaped center.

Rattlesnake Master

Flowers are 1 inch globes in greenish white at the branch ends atop the plant stem. The globes take on a bluish hue with age.

Cut-leaved Coneflower

2 to 25 flower heads at the top of the plant, single at the tips of long stalks and the tips of branching stems. Flowers are 2 to 3 inches across with 6 to 12 droopy yellow petals (ray flowers). The center disk is ½ to ¾ inch across, initially a green, dome-shaped cone; when...

Common Boneset

Flowers are white and in clusters from 2-8"across. Each flower head has about 15 florets.

Western Sunflower

The plant produces 1-12 flower heads with 8-12 petals. Typical daisy-like flower.

False (Ox-Eye) Sunflower

The yellow flower with brown center is also called an Ox-eye Daisy. It has a daisy form, flat with yellow-orange rays and a brownish center.

Round-headed Bush Clover

Each flower as many hairy bracts with small white flowers. Each flower is less that 1/2'" long with 5 white petals and abut of purple at the base.

Bee-Balm

Each lavender-pink flower begin blooming in the center and gradually moves around to the outside forming a wreath.

Prickly-Pear

A striking plant featuring showy, yellow flowers with red centers.

Yellow Coneflower

Daisy-like composite flowers with yellow drooping pedals, up to 13. The florets are 1-1.5" across and is centered with a raised head that begins light green or gray and turns dark brown.

Black-eyed Susan

Each stem supports 1 flower. A daisy-like blossom with bright yellow slender and pointed florets around a dark brown disk.

Brown-eyed Susan

Stems have 1-2 flowers heads; bright yellow ray florets around a brown-black flattened disk.

Rosinweed

Each flower is 2-3 inches across and are daisy-like, with 12-25 ray florets.

Compass Plant

Sunflower-like flowers, up to 5 inches in diameter, with yellow petals and yellow centers. Flowers bloom in loos spikes on the upper part of the plant.

Cup Plant

Daisy-like blossoms of light yellow rays (20-40) around a darker yellow center about 3 inches in diameter.

Canada Goldenrod

Masses of tiny yellow flowers develop on terminal panicles with curving branches.

Stiff Golden Rod

Tiny bright yellow, daisy-like flowers in dense, erect terminal clusters. Individual flowers are larger than most other Goldenrod species.

Showy Golden Rod

Tiny bright yellow flowers in dense and erect terminal clusters

Ohio Spiderwort

Deep blue three-petaled flowers which open for a day and close in the afternoon. Can self seed and spread when in ideal conditions.

Hoary Vervain

Blueish purple flowers on a long narrow stalk. Flowers are densely packed on the panicles, but bloom only a few at a times from bottom to top.

Golden Alexander

Flowers are flat-topped clusters (compound umbrels) of tiny yellow flowers that float on stems above the mounded green leaves.

Pearly Everlasting

A small white flower with a yellow center has a rounded rather than flat shape.

Rough Blazing Star

Flowers are in a spike-like cluster 6 to 18" long of purple to pink flower heads.

Ironweed

Flat-topped or dome-shaped clusters up to 4" across at the top of the plant, and smaller clusters arising from upper leaf axils. Clusters are made up of a few of many flower heads. Each head is made up of 10 to 30 tubular purple flowers with 5 narrow spreading lobes, a split style with curved

New England Aster

Branching clusters of stalked flowers at the top of the stem and arising from upper leaf axils. Branches are often leafy and crowded with flowers. Flowers are 1 - 1 1/2" across with 40-100 narrow petals (ray flowers) and a golden yellow center that turns reddish purple with age. Ray color is purple to rose

Purple Coneflower

Large flower heads, 3-5" wide, made up of 14-20 droopy purple petals that surround a spiny cone-shaped orange center.

Smooth Aster

Showy and conspicuous with many flowers per plant. Each flower has 15-20 petals that range in color from purple or pale blue to white. Petals surround a yellow center disk.

Sneezeweed

Branching clusters of up to 100 stalked flowers at the top of the plant. Flowers are 1 - 2" across with 10 - 15 bright yellow petals (ray flowers), each with 3 shallow lobes at the tip. The large center disk is globular, yellow to brownish.

Joe-Pye-Weed

Flowers are found in large flat clusters of pink-purple flowers 5-10" wide. Hundreds of individual flowers 1/4" wide make up the flower head.

Lanceleaf Coreopsis

Flowers are conspicuous, bright yellow with one flower at the tip of long stems. There are 8 petals each having 4 lobes at the tip.

Orange Coneflower

Bold yellow-orange flowers that virtually cover the foliage.

Butterfly Weed

The bright orange flower clusters are at the top of the stem. Each flower has 5 petals, and the lower part of the flower turns backward which is typical of milkweeds.

Swamp Milkweed

Fragrant rosy red and white flowers 1/4" wide form several flat clusters 2-4" wide. Individual flowers have 5 downward curving petals and 5 upward petals resembling a crown.

Wild Lupine

Flowers are in a spike-like cluster to 8" long. Individual flowers are 3/4 to 1" long and a typical pea-shape, on a short stalk. The lower parts of the flower are blue. The upper parts may be blue, or two-tone blue and purple, or blue and white.

Prairie Smoke

3 flowers on long stalks at the top of a hairy but otherwise naked stem, with a pair of deeply lobed, green to red leafy bracts at the base of the cluster and another along the flower stalk. Each flower is 3/4 to 1" long, generally red but may be a reddish shade of pink,...

Wild Strawberry

Clusters of white flowers, usually several blooming at a time and sometimes nodding, at the end of a stem usually shorter than the height of surrounding leaves. Flowers are 1/2 to 3/4" wide with 5 round to oval petals, about 20 yellow stamens surrounding a yellowish center, and 5 sharply pointed sepals as long as

Beardtongue

Long stalked, ascending clusters arising from leaf axils in the upper plant, with 3 to several short-stalked flowers branching at the tip of each cluster. Flowers are about 2" long, white to pale pink or lavender, tubular with 5 rounded lobes.

Culver’s Root

Spike cluster of up to 10" long densely packed with 4-parted white tubular flowers, each about 1/4" long with 2 yellow or reddish brown-tipped stamens.