Eupatorium or Eutrochium?

This is a colony of Joe Pye Weed.   It's tall - about 8' tall.    The flowers are varying shades of mauve.

This one is just ready to open but gives you a good idea of the color.  When fully open it looks quite fuzzy and the bees and butterflies and hummingbirds are all over it. 

This is one of many Eupatorium varieties we have here - tall ones, short ones, white, pink, blue...we have a bunch.   Or it's a type of Eutrochium - hard to tell.   I've seen almost identical photos in descriptions of both.

The leaves are opposite and 5 or 6 of them surround the stem.   Sometimes the stems are spotted and the flower heads a bit flatter [Spotted Joe Pye Weed.]    It likes moist areas around creeks and bogs.   We have a lot of it along the creeks. 

Early Fall Wildflowers

It's beautiful this time of year.  

 We found this colony of Great Lobelia [Lobelia syphilitica] with some Missouri Primroses [Oenothera missouriensis] along a wet spot on one of our back roads.   It's glorious.  

These plants are about 24 inches high.   They like calm damp places and the blue fades right into the green.   It's hard to get a pic that captures how beautiful a whole stand is.  


I love that blue.

 And I love, love, love this fuchsia.  This is Vernonia altissima - Tall Ironweed.   It's called ironweed because the stems are like iron.  Almost impossible to pull up and you have to cut the stems to collect them.    We have this everywhere out here.  Cows and horses won't eat it, but they do fertilize it.   Which is why we have fields full of it.  

Glorious fuchsia fields. 

The bugs love it, too.  

Each of those little petals becomes a seed.   They spread like crazy. 


These plants are 4' - 5' high.  If you try to mow them, they'll just come back.   Shorter.   It's kind of not worth the effort. 

Nestled low in the grass, like pools of floral liquid, are large colonies of Blue Mist Flower.   It's one of many Eupatoria that are native here.  This is Eupatorium coeruleum.   It gets about 12 inches high.   I like it because it volunteers in nice places, but is easy enough to pull out where you don't want it.