Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator at the University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb, Illinois, and we have got a great show for you today. Well, I think we're coming up on my favorite time of year. It's when the goldenrods start blooming. And you know I'm not doing this by myself.
Chris Enroth: 00:25I'm joined as always every single week by educator Ken Johnson in Jacksonville. Hey, Ken.
Ken Johnson: 00:31Hello, Chris. I think some of the Goldenrod in my yard is getting pretty close. Starting to see some yellow poke up. Not not quite open all the way, but in there. Mhmm.
Chris Enroth: 00:42I was in a prairie yesterday, and the Canadian goldenrod in this interior was starting to bloom. But the stuff on the exterior, the perimeter was not. So very interesting. And somebody who I know was also in a prairie lately, horticulture educator Emily Swihart in Milan, Illinois. Emily, how's it going?
Emily Swihart: 01:02Hi guys, it's going great. And yeah, I got to do a prairie tour just this morning. It was a newly planted prairie and so it's managed and there wasn't any goldenrod that I saw. So I think either it maybe is coming up a little bit later or wasn't part of the mix. But I also have some starting to peek out in our landscape.
Emily Swihart: 01:23The blooms are starting to open, which is we'll talk about the bloom structures, but like it teases you for a while. It's lovely. And I'm excited to have fall just roll along here.
Chris Enroth: 01:37Would you all say well, I guess I'll ask you. What's your favorite season of the year?
Ken Johnson: 01:45Anyone that's not hot.
Chris Enroth: 01:47Okay. That's sometimes winter can get kinda warm, Ken. So any season, it's not.
Ken Johnson: 01:54Warm is different than hot.
Chris Enroth: 01:56That's true. Okay.
Emily Swihart: 01:58That's a great point.
Chris Enroth: 01:59I like it.
Emily Swihart: 02:00Yeah. You know, that's a trick tricky question because I do love the warm weather, but I also love kind of the atmosphere of fall, the changing of the plants, like the humidity drops a bit. I like October vibes quite a bit. But I mean, by the time spring comes around, I'm ready to be done with winter and all the coats and the muck, you know, and but I love a good, like, fresh fallen snow. So I don't have a favorite season.
Emily Swihart: 02:32I like a lot of things about all of them, and I think there are certain days during each season that I would like to move on to the next one. So I don't know. That's not a great answer.
Chris Enroth: 02:42I'm That is a great answer.
Emily Swihart: 02:44I'm not gonna
Chris Enroth: 02:45I would just I agree. I say ditto to that. Okay. Yes. I like that's a great answer.
Emily Swihart: 02:52I will On that point, I will just say one thing. I did read once. I thought this was really wonderful and the attitude that kind of inspired all of that. And it was that when we think of the seasons, the ones that we don't like. So generally, my whole life I've spent not liking winter.
Emily Swihart: 03:08It was like you think of the worst conditions of that season. Like that's what you associate with that season. So Ken, not all of summer is just hot and humid. Just 95% of it. So think of those days.
Ken Johnson: 03:23I like the other 5%.
Emily Swihart: 03:25There. See, that's what we need to hold on to. But I try to adopt that with winter because I really don't like being cold, but it's not all just bitter cold. So anyways.
Ken Johnson: 03:38Girl Beard Adults.
Emily Swihart: 03:42I will think about that.
Chris Enroth: 03:45He's not kidding.
Emily Swihart: 03:48I know. Neither was I.
Chris Enroth: 03:50Yeah. Yeah. Well, today, we are talking about Goldenrods, which I think is sort of like a it's like a signature, almost feels like, of a transition from summer into fall. And we talked about we've already, well, dropped the Canadian Goldenrod name, but it's not all just Canadian Goldenrod. Of course, we live in a diverse natural world.
Chris Enroth: 04:16We have a immense amount of goldenrod species to choose from. Actually, we can go multi genus on this one too. So in our discussion today about goldenrod, I'm probably going to refer a lot to this Mount Cuba study. Ken, I know you said you pulled something off of Chicago Botanic Garden. But they didn't all go Soliadago, which is what I would think of when I think of the Goldenrod genus.
Chris Enroth: 04:47In fact, there's been some shuffling of species here lately, but there's also the Euthymia and also and the alligatorate alligeneron. Gotta say it out loud for the first time, folks. Alligeneron. I that's how you say it.
Ken Johnson: 05:06Sounds good to me.
Chris Enroth: 05:07Sure. Okey dokey.
Emily Swihart: 05:09We support you 100%.
Chris Enroth: 05:12Alright. Well, there are some Goldenrod species that I've always known as Soledago. But then when I looked them up for this particular show, they got moved into the oleginoron genus. I will talk about it. I guess when we get to that, that bridge, we'll we'll talk about that.
Chris Enroth: 05:29But I suppose some of the major differences, the only thing that I'm really aware of is that the Euthymia is that it is a it's a different species. It's a different genus. But they look very similar. And they kind of fulfill that same ecological niche in terms of timing and flower presentation and everything. But, yeah, anything else to add on?
Chris Enroth: 05:54Like, why do why are we dealing with three genus right here? Genre, I should say.
Ken Johnson: 06:02Because people like splitting stuff up. What are doing? It's genetics. Genetics are the worst. They keep messing everything up.
Chris Enroth: 06:11Yeah. That's right.
Ken Johnson: 06:14But I think
Emily Swihart: 06:14that's don't live go ahead.
Ken Johnson: 06:16I think that's why they split the Solidago and the oligiviron neuron. It was because of genetic analysis and stuff.
Emily Swihart: 06:28And plant classification has been going on for centuries. We've been trying to group things together like plants and so much of it was on observations, at first different flower forms and leaf types. It's like the more you know, the more complicated things kind of get. We could do this in all sorts of areas of ecology. So yeah, once we started analyzing genetics, you started seeing differences that are not visible to the naked eye or the general observer, even the astute observer.
Emily Swihart: 07:03And then we're compelled to reclassify things. I'm not gonna lose sleep over it personally. The one one of the ones that got reclassified is one of my favorite Goldenrods, so I will still love it as a Goldenrod.
Chris Enroth: 07:20Yes. But I guess if we had to point out a distinction of like, like why why is there now this Allegioneron? Like, what can we see physically that we doesn't require DNA testing? From what I've seen is like a legeron is the flat topped inflorescence, Goldenrod inflorescence as opposed to maybe the panic or spike inflorescence. But even then, actually, when I was reading, I think it was Minnesota Wildflowers, they have a couple entries on Goldenrod.
Chris Enroth: 07:56They don't seem happy about this. I don't know. I'm putting words in their mouth, but my interpretation of their text was a begrudgingly, we're gonna change this name from Swildago to Oledronon. So
Ken Johnson: 08:13this is from the University of Waterloo Astoria Lab. It's the one who did all this, so you can send your angry letters there.
Chris Enroth: 08:22I'll do my weekly postmarked angry letter to them.
Ken Johnson: 08:26Saying the euthymia or however you say it. That is like the grass leaved goldenrods. That's a common name for those, at least for the ones we find in Illinois. I think they're all grass leaf goldenrod or include that in their name somewhere. They have much more much finer leaves on them, grass like.
Chris Enroth: 08:46Okay. But speaking of Illinois goldenrods, about how many species are we talking about here native to our particular state?
Ken Johnson: 08:57So from what I found, there's 22 species in the Chicagoland area. And when you look on the Illinois Natural History Survey site, it looks like that they list on there. So at least that's what I came across. Okay.
Emily Swihart: 09:16But there's about 100 species native to North America. So there's quite a bit of variety across the country when you get to Illinois. Narrows down just a little bit.
Chris Enroth: 09:29Yeah. Yeah. And we'll cover a couple of those particular species. But I suppose maybe people have heard a lot of horror stories about Goldenrods. So I don't know, Emily, do you want to shed any light on why should we plant these?
Chris Enroth: 09:44Like what's the do they serve a purpose in our landscape? There's such problems?
Emily Swihart: 09:51Well, yes, they absolutely serve a purpose. And I would challenge that there's such problems like that notion. We can, well, like you said, we'll dive into that just a little bit more. One being the sneezes issue, we'll get there, Pete. Both hang tight.
Emily Swihart: 10:07Goldenrod are, well, first of all, since they're so abundant, they grow in so many different places. They fill in a lot of different ecosystem niches across the different species. So we can have them on wide open prairies. We can have them growing in woodland areas, so full sun all the way different in part shade. Some are more tolerant of dry sites.
Emily Swihart: 10:29Some are more tolerant of moist soil conditions. They're so diverse in where they can go that There's kind of like one for everything. And as such they are keystone species. They serve just a lot of different, especially pollinator species, like those beneficial pollinators. But a lot of wildlife utilizes Goldenrod.
Emily Swihart: 10:56So not only are they plants that will thrive in a lot of places, like you can find one for everywhere. I think it was the Mount Cuba study that was like, there's one for every site. Every garden you can find one that will be appropriate to plant in your landscape. But they are keystone species and benefit all sorts of wildlife. Also, they bloom later in the season.
Emily Swihart: 11:21Related to the pollinator insect relationship. They are later blooming. And so right now, I'm sure everyone's observing that their gardens are fading. You know, mid summer we've got an abundance of blooms. We've just, we've got, you know, dozens, maybe hundreds to choose from, right?
Emily Swihart: 11:36Especially if you want to attract pollinators and wildlife. You've got ample choices from, let's say, May through July. And then August starts drying up and the season starts progressing and a lot of plants start to set seed, you know, and kind of settle in to go dormant for the winter months, while these later blooming plants are going to step up and provide that nectar and pollen resource then for insects to help them, you know, continue to feed. I like to eat all year long. All of the insects that are still active right now need those resources.
Emily Swihart: 12:15And so Goldenrod really does a nice job of filling that niche. So what did I miss? I'm there was something.
Ken Johnson: 12:23I'll say for and for, like, that late season stuff, you know, that's that's an important time of year because you've got insects that are gonna be getting ready to overwinter. So you think about, like, bumblebees and, you know, the queens mate in overwinter. So they've got to build up reserves to survive the winter. You've got things monarchs, you know, being the classic example migrating that they need to fuel up so they can make that migration. So fall is an important time of year for things and how successful they will be at overwintering or migrating elsewhere to overwinter.
Chris Enroth: 13:00I think it's just cool to see all the insects on them at the end of the season. I could probably get like, park a folding chair and just, like, stare at Goldenrod flowers. And you'll just see a whole host of, like, everything from flies, wasps, butterflies, everything seems to just be on the beetles. Like, it's just yeah. There's a whole host of insects.
Chris Enroth: 13:24I think they're just fun to watch.
Emily Swihart: 13:27Yeah. So value.
Chris Enroth: 13:29Yes.
Ken Johnson: 13:30So for, the insects. So this is from National Wildlife Foundation. So they've got ecoregion maps and they list some of the, you know, the keystone species for those. So Eastern Tempered Forest, which is the vast majority of the Eastern US, ecoregion eight, if you really want to know. There's documented 104 caterpillar species or specialists on Goldenrod, and there's 42 pollen specialist bee species.
Ken Johnson: 13:56So they feed either exclusively or primarily on goldenrod. For the Great Plains, so the other side of the Mississippi, 71 caterpillar species, 56 pollen specialist bee species. So there's a lot of individuals that rely on Goldenrod. You don't have Goldenrod. You don't have them.
Ken Johnson: 14:14You know, for for Solidago in the Central US, there's about 58 bee specialists, about 40 of those in Illinois. And I can that comes from his name, Jared Fowler. We can include a link. He's got a whole table on all the different species and and what they feed on. I I went down a rabbit hole.
Ken Johnson: 14:32And like outside of, you know, the like, anyway, much outside of, you know, the butterfly or the caterpillars and the bees, you've got so a study in Central New York, there's nine species of leaf beetles that specialize on goldenrod. So like leaf beetles would be things like flea beetles, Colorado potato beetle, cucumber beetles, once people are familiar with. Usually pest species, but you've got nine of these that specialize on goldenrod. There's over 50 species of gall makers that utilize goldenrod. I think the the most common one or one people notice the most, goldenrod gall fly, which is like a fruit fly, lay its eggs in the stems.
Ken Johnson: 15:10You get this big gall, but they're overwinter and they emerge, April, May time frame. Then there's birds. There's chickadees and downy woodpeckers will feed on those galls, feed on the larvae. You've got other insects that will parasoid wasps that will feed on those galls, on those flies. There's beetles that will feed on them.
Ken Johnson: 15:32So you've got this whole community that that relies just on goldenrod and then it's feeding other things too. So it's it's kind of that trickle down effect, for goldenrod and other keystone species.
Emily Swihart: 15:45I do love seeing those galls. I'm glad you mentioned that. Those are so fun to I don't know. I just like running my hand over. I don't I don't pick them, but they're just so fun to see on those stems.
Emily Swihart: 15:54They're, like, golf ball size. Just yeah.
Chris Enroth: 15:59The Mount Cuba Center did remark, I think multiple times and I even listened to their presentation. This was earlier in the year, Sam Hoadley, who's their horticulturist, he gave a presentation a webinar about this report that I'm referencing. And I watched it, and they took it down. I couldn't watch it again, or else I'd I'd watch it every month. But he remarked multiple times about the warblers that they would see in the Goldenrod.
Chris Enroth: 16:30So but they in the report, it even talks about seeing common yellowthroat warbler, magnolia warbler, palm warbler, yellow warbler. So these are more eastern type species, you know, or but then he also saw lots of kinglets, Ruby crowned kinglet. They would be scrounging on the insects as we just described. And then in the wintertime, he saw lots of birds use the kind of the seeds, the seed heads as a food source, white throated sparrows and dark eyed juncos. So they're providing multiple seasons.
Ken Johnson: 17:11Smorgasbord. Mhmm.
Emily Swihart: 17:17Before we get into like growing them, can we talk about like the flowers? Like they're they're recognizable and they're they're providing a huge ecological service by feeding so many pollinators, and the plants are also helping to support insect wildlife. One thing, and I felt kind of foolish. So if anyone reads our blog, you'll note a couple weeks ago I admitted that I forget things and then I like relearn it. I relearned the obvious that the flower heads are composite flowers, but they're like super composites.
Emily Swihart: 17:53That's my words, not snot. So when you look at a Goldenrod, and I'm just kind of noting this because I think since they're blooming now, can go out and look at them. This is also what helps prolong the bloom time. So like you start seeing yellow flowers bloom. But they kind of reveal itself.
Emily Swihart: 18:13It's not all at once, right? It doesn't happen just like overnight. It kind emerges. And I think that's a really neat aesthetic feature in the landscape. We're going to talk about putting into a garden design.
Emily Swihart: 18:29They have a long bloom season, but it's because they have hundreds of flowers on the flower head. So what we read maybe as one flower head is many flowers and you can kind of see them as little individual flowers but if you look really really close those are made up of actual flowers. The flowers of Goldenrod are extremely small. I don't know. I just kinda wanted to call that out real quick so that people can if you're enjoying Goldenrod and have a, you know, a magnifying glass, maybe go out and analyze the the flower heads a little bit more.
Emily Swihart: 19:05It's just nature's cool.
Ken Johnson: 19:07I was I was the same way. I you know, they're, you know, ask Tracy, so they got the Mhmm. Compound flowers or whatever. Yeah, each little what you would consider a flower is actually a cluster. Usually, I think about sunflowers.
Ken Johnson: 19:22Those are easy to see the individual flowers on there.
Emily Swihart: 19:28Yeah.
Chris Enroth: 19:28Yes.
Emily Swihart: 19:28In the in the Mount Cuba report, they have photos, and I I want to go and dissect one if I can. They're so small. The photos of the disc flower and the ray flowers are on the end of someone's finger. And you can see their finger takes up the whole picture and you can see their fingerprint as a part of it. It's just they're so petite.
Emily Swihart: 19:55Really, you have wear the glasses, wear the good glasses when you go out into the garden when you're looking at them. But okay. So let's get to how they grow and then we can review some of the studies. Because they were evaluated for how, what was it? It was how they did overall and then disease resistance and I forget the other one.
Chris Enroth: 20:21Think pollinator attractiveness. That's it.
Emily Swihart: 20:24Yeah. So we'll get into that. But first, some myth busting. Chris, are they gonna eat eat our gardens? Can we even plant them?
Emily Swihart: 20:33Should we even continue on with this podcast? Or are they just gonna eat the whole landscape and we should just stop right here?
Chris Enroth: 20:40Here's a great stopping point everyone. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. No. No.
Chris Enroth: 20:47We we just have a bad taste in our mouth because of one particular species, Canadian goldenrod, which is something that we would not typically incorporate into like a home garden landscape setting. And actually, we probably might shutter to even put them in a larger scale prairie restoration setting. Because even in the large scale like that, that's going to show up eventually. And because it can be so aggressive, we typically want to have our other perennial native plants more established before we introduce some of the more aggressive native plants out there. So Canadian goldenrod, yes, I would encourage people to stay away from those, but the other ones, the other species, which we'll discuss, yeah, I I I did I don't see them as aggressive spreaders.
Chris Enroth: 21:38Do they have rhizomes? Some of them do that will spread, but it's not nearly to the point where I think people think of like Canadian Goldenrod. And actually, I wanted them to eat my garden. I really, I really did. I was trying to start a pollinator garden where I had my ditch daylilies.
Chris Enroth: 22:00You all are probably familiar with those. They're the orange flower daylilies, the Hammericalis, was it fulva, the just gross daylilies. Just made me not like all daylilies, this darn plant. Anyway, I've done everything I can short of dousing them an herbicide to try to fight them back. I thought for one year, I thought, well, let's put some more aggressive plants in there.
Chris Enroth: 22:25And I put a different species of goldenrods in there, species. So I really wanted them to eat my garden and they didn't. I guess we'll get into that. You're all my people get into it now. So should we dive into maybe those different ones?
Chris Enroth: 22:46And and I guess I'll share how I use them to try to combat daylily, which was an utter failure. Ken, you you're looking at that Chicago Botanic Garden trial. I got Mount Cuba. I mean, would you say those two are pretty comparable in terms of the performance of these species in the gardens or the trials?
Ken Johnson: 23:10Yeah. I think there's some overlap, between what I say. For the Chicago one that they planted theirs, They started in 1993. It was a five year trial, so it's quite a bit older. So I'm sure there's some that was in the Mount Cuba that were not available in the trade when the Chicago Botanic Garden was on, and theirs wasn't as extensive as the Mount Cuba.
Ken Johnson: 23:36But I think I know for a couple, were both listed as, you know, some of the top performers. So, yeah, there's some overlap between them. Mhmm.
Emily Swihart: 23:48And Mount Cuba was is a more recent it was a 2020 planting, and then they started evaluating in 2021. So that's kind of the time frame. Like, Chicago was was many years advanced.
Ken Johnson: 24:01And I I will say the one thing Chicago did do well, I think Mount Cuba does this too, but I think Chicago made a point on hardiness. Whereas Mount Cuba, where they say they're seven a, they're in Delaware. So they're a little bit warmer than than most of Illinois. So just keep that in mind if you're up in Northern Illinois.
Emily Swihart: 24:25Hello.
Chris Enroth: 24:26Yes. That's good point. And so the other thing that I did read from the Mount Cuba study in terms of maintenance, in terms of watering, they only watered once. That was at establishment. And so not they did 70 different types of goldenrod.
Chris Enroth: 24:51Not all of them made it through to the end. So it looks like they lost eight goldenrod species. They didn't make it to the very end of the trial. So they're left about 62 that made it to the end that were evaluated fully. They did have volunteers that would come out.
Chris Enroth: 25:14They would kind of give it a rating. Looks like it was a scale of like one to five. And anything that in the report that they include, anything above 3.9 or higher is included and that is a total of 13 species.
Ken Johnson: 25:32And
Chris Enroth: 25:34the volunteers would rate it. They would also do insect interactions, and they, they made what 6,000 observations with a total of 20,000 insect interactions that occurred on these plants. So I mean, that's, that's a lot. It's a lot of data right there.
Emily Swihart: 25:57I just want to know when when so when they were evaluating them, so they waited their evaluation criteria a little bit off. They waited, so we talked about they did the an overall plant evaluation, so that was on the foliage form, vigor, and habit. And then they did the floral display and the disease resistance. Overall plant rating was weighted at 5025% to each the floral display and the disease resistance. So as we're looking at these, they prioritized the overall score.
Emily Swihart: 26:36And
Chris Enroth: 26:38the last column I see on their table here is deer browse. I mean, that's a pretty good one to include for some of us. Whether you're in the rural area or suburban Illinois, deer are a problem. So yeah.
Ken Johnson: 27:00So for the the Chicago Botanic, they base theirs off of floral display, including flower color, flower coverage, and bloom period, habit display, so height and width measurements, how much is spread, foliage quality, winter hardiness, cultural adaptability, and disease and pest resistance. So they're looking at powdery mildew and rust, which I think Mount Cuba did as well. And for theirs, I think they said they watered as needed. No fertilizer and mulched with shredded leaves or wood chips. So and low maintenance like you would typically see in most home garden settings.
Ken Johnson: 27:42Okay.
Emily Swihart: 27:46There was you already mentioned that there was some crossover in some of the results. There were some some patterns that we found. Ken, do you want to kick off the discussion about the the results, like the top performers?
Ken Johnson: 28:00Yeah. So the top one for the Chicago was Rugosa Fireworks. So they did their theirs is a rate four star or out of four stars. That was four star. They had six.
Ken Johnson: 28:15So Ragosa fireworks, was the top. And I believe that was at the top in the or second top highest in Mount Cuba. Mhmm. So there, you know, there are kind of real brief synopsis on that one was highest rating is due to its fine textured foliage and arching stems bursting with tiny yellow flowers. A slow spreader stays under five feet, blooms mid September to late October.
Ken Johnson: 28:40That's the the real quick synopsis of that one. The Saldigo rigida, which I don't know what the common name for that.
Chris Enroth: 28:54Stiff Goldenrod. Stiff Goldenrod,
Emily Swihart: 28:55and that one got recategorized. So if you can't Yes. Yeah. That's our
Ken Johnson: 29:00That one was the top think that was top of Mount Cuba too. So this one's over five feet tall, clump forming, and stay that way throughout the five years. Great green foliage contrast nicely with flat yellow flowers, blooms late August to early October for that one.
Chris Enroth: 29:18Can we, can we stick with, stiff Goldenrod for a second? Emily, you said you had a favorite that got reclassified. I'm I'm trying to put the the dots together here. Is that the one?
Emily Swihart: 29:29Yes. Yes. And it is actually not, just like straight species. I always have like straight species. Fireworks of course is very popular and has been for basically our entire lives.
Emily Swihart: 29:43Like it was introduced in, was it 1970? Can we just take a moment and recognize like what an amazing feat that is? That a plant that has, like the longevity of a plant being so well regarded for so long. That doesn't happen very often. I just think it speaks a lot to that selection, but then also I think the plant in general.
Emily Swihart: 30:12I don't know. I've always liked the form. I like that flat top of form that you can find in Ragosa or stiff goldenrod. But also it is more kind of compact. It behaves better even in a prairie planting or in either spot.
Emily Swihart: 30:31I don't know, I've just always liked it. I've always been partial. Flowers are smaller in size also. Some of the I might get emails about this, but some of the Goldenrods just have big obnoxious flowers. Like they're just huge.
Emily Swihart: 30:47Right? They're really, really big and spreading. Which is a look. It's fine. I I guess I've always just preferred this stiff goldenrod.
Emily Swihart: 30:56Anyways, they're all great. But if I had to choose, that'd be the one I would choose. You guys have a favorite?
Chris Enroth: 31:06You have a favorite, The one with the most insects?
Emily Swihart: 31:11The one with the big obnoxious flowers.
Ken Johnson: 31:14Yes. I'm trying to think what we've got in our yard. We've got a couple different kinds, and I don't remember which one's which now. So I'll I'll have to report back later.
Emily Swihart: 31:27You don't have to have a favorite either.
Chris Enroth: 31:29No. You don't. It's not required. Nope. But your paycheck will that will be determined upon your selection of a Goldenrod.
Chris Enroth: 31:37Yes.
Ken Johnson: 31:38They're all my favorite in their own special ways.
Chris Enroth: 31:43They're not your kids, Ken. I I will say in this, Mount Kubrick report, it does also give total bumblebee observations. And most of them are, like, fourteen, thirty six, twenty, two, ten, 40. But then there's this one that has a 198. That particular one is Soliobago arsenicola or arsenicola, Alabama ecotype.
Chris Enroth: 32:11So and the average insect per observation, that's pretty high too on here. Oh, yeah, that maybe that's a good one to have, Ken.
Emily Swihart: 32:23Oh, he's hardiness if it was yeah. He is.
Chris Enroth: 32:30No hardiness indicated.
Emily Swihart: 32:33Oh, because I heard that Alabama ecotype that well.
Chris Enroth: 32:37Yeah, I bet it's I bet it's more of a southern loving species.
Emily Swihart: 32:44One can get away with it.
Chris Enroth: 32:46He might, he might. The one with the highest average insects per observation is Soliandago leavenworthii, which is a South Carolina ecotype. I think this is also known as like giant goldenrod because this one gets up to 11 foot tall.
Emily Swihart: 33:05Oh gosh.
Chris Enroth: 33:06So this is a big one. But it blooms really late in the year mid October to early November, has 12.37 average insects per observation. Contrast that with, fireworks, which has 4.58 insects per observation. So I mean, I I feel like depending upon your goals, if you are wanting to attract more pollinators, more insects, you know, you don't necessarily need to go with the top runner. Maybe it doesn't have to look perfect or as beautiful in your landscape or restoration area, whatever you're working on.
Chris Enroth: 33:43But there's I I this Mount Cuba report, they have a spreadsheet where you can sort of sort by each one of their their fields that they evaluated.
Emily Swihart: 33:54Yeah. And I think I guess I should say I do I have that favorite based on use. Almost all my favorites are chosen as favorites through the lens of planting in a a designed landscape. You know, like using them in a more intentional way. There's a whole like restoration side of me that would have different- would make different choices.
Emily Swihart: 34:20Because the goals- to me there's different goals in those different areas. So, like in a CRP planting or in a prairie planting that is more wild, more reminiscent of a native prairie planting, that would have different criteria by which I would choose that one by. I mean, still like stiff goldenrod for planting in there, but I would not. There'd be other ones that I think would also have a little heavier weight,
Ken Johnson: 34:53Mhmm.
Emily Swihart: 34:53If that was what I was going towards. We
Chris Enroth: 34:57came across the stiff goldenrod kind of section in one prairie. I got excited when I saw it. And so I put stiff goldenrod in my pollinator garden to compete with the day lilies. And I was so excited to have it there. And I can't find anymore.
Chris Enroth: 35:17Actually, before we recorded today, went outside looking in the garden to see if I could find it. I can't find it. But I did plant fireworks. So I do also have the fireworks in there. And that's doing great.
Chris Enroth: 35:31It's not spreading. It's not taking over. It's just sort of like holding its own against the daylily incursion. So straight species of stiff goldenrod, which we now call a legionarum, rigidum, disappeared. Could not compete with aggressive daylilies, but fireworks doing the trick, holding your own, giving me time maybe to get out there with a potato fork and dig up those daylilies.
Emily Swihart: 36:03That's surprising. I I would because Goldenrod. I'm not going to say that scientific name, so you know. I'm not going to do it.
Chris Enroth: 36:15My tongue is going numb just trying to
Emily Swihart: 36:17say You're doing great. I will have to practice before I stumble over things. I think Ken be a decent self seeding plant, so that's interesting.
Chris Enroth: 36:31Yeah. I'm very sad.
Emily Swihart: 36:33Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Are there honorable mentions or I mean, do we wanna go through some of the other ones? I think we should.
Ken Johnson: 36:42You may do the other
Emily Swihart: 36:44Yeah. Four. Yes, please.
Ken Johnson: 36:47The Chicago. Alright. So in in no particular order. So the other four four stars for the Chicago Botanic Garden was Solidago baby son, which I believe is a hybrid because I cannot find out what species that was specifically. Granted, I didn't do a terribly deep dive on this.
Ken Johnson: 37:07I got distracted by the insects. They say that listed as a low growing, early blooming goldenrod remains upright and rarely flops even after flowering. Two foot tall stature makes it a good choice for small space gardens. So goldenrods aren't just giants. Blooms from July to mid August, a little bit earlier in the year.
Ken Johnson: 37:26There's Solidago flexicalis variegata, would be the cultivar for that one. Semi shaded wooded areas, bright variegated foliage foliage, grows taller than four feet and has a spreading nature, so you may need to do some work to keep that, in check down the road potentially. Bloom from early September to October. Solidago gold kind, about the same size as baby sun, for high good choice for high flower production, sterity habit, disease resistance, blooms late July to September. And then the last one was a Solidago golden fleece.
Ken Johnson: 38:08I'm not even gonna try this species. It says most compact of all goldenrods under two feet tall, will spread slowly to over three feet, blooms late August to late October. So those are the ones from their their study. They started in '93. And I and I will say, if you go to the Chicago Botanic Garden website for their the plant trials or their trialing page, they do list they have an ongoing trial with Solidago.
Ken Johnson: 38:36So maybe we can look forward to some more up to date stuff here.
Emily Swihart: 38:42I, appreciate you mentioning that they're not all large. There are some quite petite, you know, selections and then species mentioned here that are very appropriate. And those larger ones too, I guess I also wanna note, people don't need to, like, rule them out for the landscape. Just put them in, like, the back of your bed. You know, like, like, on the back of a fence or kind of in the center of the bed so they don't block views of your other plants.
Emily Swihart: 39:14So here's a place for them. But when I hear giant plants, sometimes I think people just feel like, Oh, that's going to take over. If it's an aggressive spreader or if it does spread by rhizomes, that can be a challenge. But just like the sheer size of it, just make sure that you are accommodating that in your bed and placing it, in a space that it's gonna, complement the other plants, not screen them.
Chris Enroth: 39:39So where we see some commonalities with the two studies, Ken, I noticed something. You mentioned Solidago Flexocolis and kind of the top echelon for Chicago. Solidago Flexocolis ranked 57 out of 62 in the Mount Cuba one. And I know that one is Zigzag Goldenrod. It's also called Broadleaf Goldenrod, which that surprised me how the difference in the two different studies.
Chris Enroth: 40:14And I have also planted Zig Zag Goldenrod. And I had a lot of hope for this one. This one actually did spread a little bit in the daylilies. But alas, it was not there anymore. It could not outcompete.
Chris Enroth: 40:29But I really like zigzag goldenrod. I think I'm going to get it again and maybe put it more in a wooded area and let it do its thing. It's a very distinct goldenrod. It has these broad leaves, very serrate like a saw. And then the zigzag is kind of the pattern that leaf alternating pattern.
Chris Enroth: 40:50But it gets these axillary flower buds between the stem and the leaf. And it kind of zigzags up the stem. It's kind of cool that way. That's and that just surprised me, the difference in the two.
Ken Johnson: 41:04Yeah. We planned that in our backyard in the shaded area, and it's been doing good. I need to check this here because my children moved some brush back there and piled it right on top. So I need to go see if that actually got moved and if they're still alive.
Chris Enroth: 41:23I'll come down and get some seed if there are. Well, I guess in the Mount Cuba study, we mentioned, like, fireworks that was number one, but they talk about a tie. So fireworks, Goldenrod, they said they tied with Soliadago fistulosa, which is pine baron Goldenrod. And this is the a Delaware ecotype. And, Ken, where is Mount Cuba located?
Chris Enroth: 41:59In Delaware. No. The Delaware ecotype did the best. Okay. Interesting.
Chris Enroth: 42:07So but but these two tied. And as I go across the evaluation spreadsheet here, I mean, they're all they're pretty much they are pretty much tied until I get to, like, insect average insects per observations. So the pine baron goldenrod has more compared to fireworks. And then total bumblebee observations. Pine baron has 70 bumblebee observations.
Chris Enroth: 42:39Fireworks has 36. And then we get to the end. There's no deer browsing on pine barrens, and 40% of fireworks got browsed by deer. So do you think that they just had fireworks up they tied them because you can find fireworks in the nursery. Nobody knows what fistulosa what Swihart fistulosa where you can even get that from.
Chris Enroth: 43:06I that's just my question, my ponderance into the ether. You know, it did so well. It's a Delaware ecotype, and it might be really hard for people to find it, so they had to maybe tie fireworks with that. We should probably cut this part out because I'm all conspiracy theory right now.
Emily Swihart: 43:24I was just looking to see if
Ken Johnson: 43:27Well, they didn't have that weighted the weighted, so they may have fireworks may have been a little better on that. Mhmm. The 50% they weighed a little more.
Chris Enroth: 43:40Maybe.
Ken Johnson: 43:40I'm not sure.
Chris Enroth: 43:41Maybe. I really love fireworks. Again, it's the only one that survived the daylily incursion. But yeah.
Ken Johnson: 43:50Well, the pine baron had a shorter bloom time. So maybe that knocked it out a little bit.
Chris Enroth: 43:55Maybe. It's mid September to late September versus late September to early October.
Ken Johnson: 44:01So maybe not that one. Yeah. And that's one of those, like, I I would I would wanna know, like, you know, how well would that do in Illinois? Because that species, that's like I looked up where that's named. That's Wet Coastal Plains, so that's along the the Eastern Seaboard in the Gulf Of Mexico.
Ken Johnson: 44:19So how well would that do
Chris Enroth: 44:21Yeah.
Ken Johnson: 44:22In Illinois? And know for a lot of these for the Mount Cuba, you know, some of these ones are a little more aggressive in spreading. They they frequently mention, you know, a lot of these, like, a little more moist conditions. So if you plant it in drier areas, that may be a way to help slow the spread on some of these. Sounds like they they can't take drier conditions, but how well would that do in Illinois?
Ken Johnson: 44:45True. True. And can you even buy it?
Emily Swihart: 44:52Yeah. I I did not find I was just searching quite a bit. I cannot find. There's there was one nursery that looks like it might have it, and they are.
Ken Johnson: 45:06Am I look. I guess, sir, for some of these, you know, they are native to Eastern North America, but not necessarily Illinois. So depending on how of a purist sounds like a negative way of saying it, but how much of a native plant purist you are, You may or may not want these because they're not native to to Illinois or the Midwest for some
Emily Swihart: 45:25of them. I can't even find where this nursery is located. So I didn't exclude Illinois for shipping, but it's not promising. You'd have to work pretty hard to get a hold of the plant.
Chris Enroth: 45:43I think in some of the Mount Cuba texts that talked about working with a nursery to make this one more publicly available. But I am just in my rereading, I'm not finding anything right now.
Emily Swihart: 45:55Mhmm. Yeah.
Ken Johnson: 45:57They've got yeah. They got a section on bringing top performing Goldenrods to market.
Chris Enroth: 46:00Okay. And there it is. Couple in there. I just haven't flipped to the right page.
Emily Swihart: 46:06Oh, it's in Washington, DC. Okay. So Okay. All right. Anything else we wanna note about the studies?
Emily Swihart: 46:18I think it's fascinating when we can have such extensive comparisons done.
Chris Enroth: 46:27Yeah. I don't want to, I hope we're not sounding too negative on the Mount Cuba study. I think it's valid, like you said, very valuable information that we can take and we can compare this with Chicago Botanic Garden. And hopefully, Chicago puts one out in the coming years. So then we can have even maybe more geographically relevant sort of trial data.
Chris Enroth: 46:54But I think this Mount Cuba study, this is a great trial to be able to help people make decisions about incorporating more Goldenrod into their home landscape.
Emily Swihart: 47:07Well, we've talked about it before that we sometimes do just have limited scientific data available. And so when we do have something like this, you do enjoy it, take it into consideration both the results of the study, but the methodology of the research, including the location, because plants do behave different in different ecosystems and different regions of the country. So we do like It's not just the study. I don't think We might have actually been just a little hard on it. Not that we're not on others either.
Emily Swihart: 47:48Do this with everything that we're looking at. We always look to see where it's at. Studies come out of the West Coast and we consider how that might affect the results that we would find here. So, grain of salt, critical thinking skills are valuable and a fun exercise to kind of take all of this in. And it's a great place to start.
Emily Swihart: 48:10So if people want to incorporate Goldenrod into their landscape or into a prairie planting, it's useful information. I think at least. Speaking of people incorporating it into their landscape, can we get into the sneeze issue or lack thereof? Yes. With Goldenrod?
Chris Enroth: 48:34Yes. Yes.
Emily Swihart: 48:36Yes. That's a good German word. It's German, right? Grew up German and I was told it was German. So I'm just gonna go ahead and
Chris Enroth: 48:47Good health to you is what it means.
Emily Swihart: 48:48Yes. Health returns.
Chris Enroth: 48:50Awesome. Anyways.
Emily Swihart: 48:53What were we talking about?
Chris Enroth: 48:55I think this was a medical podcast. I don't know.
Emily Swihart: 49:00No, it is not.
Chris Enroth: 49:03That's right. Lose our jobs.
Emily Swihart: 49:06Yes. Yeah. So who wants who wants to do the fun part of talking about the I'm who wants to to myth bust? Chris, you may start myth busting. Do you want to?
Chris Enroth: 49:19Yeah. Oh, I'll do that. I was once misquoted in media publication about this very thing. I did a prairie tour. I think we did seed collection.
Chris Enroth: 49:35And the the newspaper, local paper sent someone out to interview me, and they asked me this question. And I answered it like I'm about to, but they flipped it around on me. They flipped it backwards. I even wrote them asking them to print a correction, and they never did. But, anyway, this is what I said.
Chris Enroth: 49:58So in as we get late into the season, goldenrod, as we've been discussing, will come into bloom. A beautiful yellow showy flower, Canadian goldenrod. I mean, that's the most prolific one. It's the one a lot of people see across the landscape, And then they start sneezing. And their eyes are watering, the itchy eyes, itchy throat.
Chris Enroth: 50:22And obviously, what what would you think? You would think it's the showy yellow flower I see. But Goldenrod, as we discussed earlier in the show, it's visited by insects. It's insect pollinated. So that pollen is is too heavy for it to be carried about on the wind, to be to be wind pollinated.
Chris Enroth: 50:45So that's not the thing making people sneeze. There's another plant that also blooms that that blooms coincides with Goldenrod, and that is ragweed. And ragweed, you don't see the flowers because it's not necessarily attracting pollinators because it is wind pollinated. And ragweed that is the pollen that people inhale, make some sneeze, gives them that itchy throat, watery eyes in the fall. So it's that hay fever people talk about, the the the that those allergies we get later in the year.
Chris Enroth: 51:22So blame your late season allergies on ragweed, not goldenrod. Goldenrod is innocent in this. And then I went on a well, we hosted a prairie tour last Saturday, and the person who runs that prairie loves bobwhite quail. What do you think he likes to grow?
Ken Johnson: 51:43Ragweed.
Emily Swihart: 51:44He
Chris Enroth: 51:45loves giant ragweed. And so he is stewarding, like like, this whole field of giant ragweed, and he's gets these coveys of quail that inhabit this field. And so to each their own, but ragweed is a native plant also. So it's it's not invasive. It's nothing like that.
Ken Johnson: 52:08On on that note, though, I I do think it is considered a noxious weed in Illinois within city or village limits. So you have to control it in town.
Chris Enroth: 52:17Why'd you have to say that out loud, Ken? We were all thinking it.
Emily Swihart: 52:24Yes. Yes. No bobwhite quails.
Ken Johnson: 52:27No bobwhite. No.
Chris Enroth: 52:31Yep. So Goldenrod doesn't call your allergies. That's the moral of the story. Yeah.
Emily Swihart: 52:38It's just so showy that it gets blamed. Yeah. Mhmm. Thank you for setting the record straight, and I hope that you never get misquoted again because that's that would be upsetting.
Chris Enroth: 52:51That was a bad one too. It's That was a
Emily Swihart: 52:53bad one.
Chris Enroth: 52:53Yeah. Yeah. Like, I should know the difference between Goldenrod and Ragweed. It's a big one. Yep.
Emily Swihart: 53:01Yeah. Along that same vein, I did talk this morning on our prairie tour about that, but I also like, it can kind of happen in the spring too. Like Goldenrod is the one that's like the poster child for just being like falsely blamed for this. But throughout the season, like that same principle kind of applies. Like plants that have heavy pollen are not causing allergies.
Emily Swihart: 53:27Plants that have windborne pollen are causing our allergies. So keep that in mind. I think in the spring too people, you know, like their allergies flare up. And a lot of times it's our trees that are wind pollinated. And so they're putting out a lot of that pollen into the air.
Emily Swihart: 53:43Sometimes you can see it on cars and whatnot. But kind of make that connection for folks that it might be related to the release of pollen from trees or grasses. Sometimes when the corn fields are all tasseling, sometimes I will get a head situation. So, take some antihistamines, but I know where it's coming from, so now everybody else does too.
Chris Enroth: 54:10Add them all to the noxious weed list.
Emily Swihart: 54:16His email, folks, is?
Chris Enroth: 54:18Down below.
Emily Swihart: 54:22Oh, okay. One more thing we maybe need to address, which is we've hinted at it, the the Candida Goldenrod. Like, if we have it, if we wanna manage it, like, what are our options? So it is it spreads by seed, like very small seeds, and rhizomes. So this one's kind of one of those tricky ones.
Emily Swihart: 54:47You've to deal with seeds and you've to deal with rhizomes spreading and colonizing an area. And so there are kind of organic methods of dealing with it. Cultural, like you could dig it out. That is labor intensive, but it requires less. There's no chemical in the landscape.
Emily Swihart: 55:06So if that's the route you're going with, you can do that. You can also, you could try to smother it. This is gonna be hard. Smothering, plants in a landscape is very challenging. But could be- could- you could try it, if you want.
Emily Swihart: 55:28Else? Mowing to set it back can be a way of managing it. I don't think it's gonna actually kill it unless you do repeated mowings year after year and really deplete that energy source. That's just a really long game. If you're trying to kill it through mowing, probably not going to work.
Emily Swihart: 55:48But it can set it back or can help control the size and the reseeding by removing those seed heads. Which then you don't get the benefits that we just talked about. So consider that as you make your decisions. And then you could also use some broadleaf herbicides that are labeled appropriately for use on Canada Goldenrod. And so apply when there's, you know, limited wind, when the temperatures are right, you know, if these conditions are all you know, the timing is right.
Emily Swihart: 56:18So read those labels. Other I'm trying to think of other methods. I think
Chris Enroth: 56:27I've I've had some success with a could be gas powered, but I have a battery operated hedge trimmer. And right before it goes to flower, I go out and I just I'm in the middle of the prairie and I just start pirouetting like a ballerina and doing these little swoops. And I'm just cutting off with my hedge trimmer right below that flower head. Timing is kind of important with this because that plants put a lot of energy into that flower head. You want to stop it before it progresses before it opens essentially.
Chris Enroth: 57:08That does two things. One, first thing is as you remove that flower, you remove that potential seed source. Yep, we don't get that wildlife forage so that that kind of stinks that we do that. And the other thing that it does is it does open up a little bit of sunshine to underneath. And when I would do this, I would often find like just the actually we did this the other day at one of our pollinator plots up in Galesburg.
Chris Enroth: 57:39I uncovered Emily's favorite plant, mountain mint, hiding beneath the canopy of Goldenrod. And there were other plants there too. There was coneflower. There were other plants underneath. Just had to open it up a little bit.
Chris Enroth: 57:53So I've been successful with that. The other thing we did is we would come in every single fall, and we would overseed more forbs that omitting, of course, Goldenrod seed. So taking away at least that competitive edge of the seed production of the Goldenrod, adding in that competitive edge of other Forbes seed, and we've achieved a nice balance in some of our larger scale prairies. Now this is not backyard gardens, so to speak, but these these are an acre or maybe slightly larger prairies.
Emily Swihart: 58:31That's pretty labor intensive, though. So
Chris Enroth: 58:36Oh, it is. I'm all about I'm all about labor and Goldenrod.
Emily Swihart: 58:40Yes. Yeah. I wonder you know, I will I will start to to wonder out loud on our podcast for the whole world to hear and record. I wonder if, like, a late summer burn would set it back, you know, also. Just kind of that same, method of taking off the flower heads, depleting energy resources that they've already invested into flower development, and not letting them go to seed.
Emily Swihart: 59:15But then also opening up the soil for other plants to take hold and kind of compete. I don't know. It'd be an interesting kind of comparison.
Chris Enroth: 59:28Think if you had plenty of if you had like the dormant grasses, that would be your fuel because your Goldenrod might well, my your Goldenrod might still be a little bit more green. But if you had some dormant warm season grasses, you might have enough fuel to do that. Yeah.
Emily Swihart: 59:42Yeah. Yeah. I was just gonna say if you could get a fire to move through it, kinda depending on the year. There's a lot of green biomass in there that might suppress a hot fire. My master gardeners know that I like fire a lot as a tool for prairie management.
Emily Swihart: 01:00:04Safe safe use of fire, appropriate use of fire. But it is a really, really valuable tool when managing a larger scale prairie. So Mhmm. Anyways. Good.
Emily Swihart: 01:00:16Okay.
Chris Enroth: 01:00:17Well, that was a lot of great information about Goldenrods. We'll link, the, materials down below that we referenced today in the show notes so you can read through these reports yourself. Well, the Good Growing podcast production of University of Illinois Extension edited this week by Emily Swihart. That's question mark now exclamation point. Yes.
Chris Enroth: 01:00:45Think we got the schedule right. Yeah. Emily, thanks so much for editing and hanging out and sharing your Goldenrod knowledge with us today.
Emily Swihart: 01:00:53Oh, it's been my pleasure. And I absolutely understood that I was editing. That's not new information that I just learned right now. No, it's been, it's been great. This is a great plant.
Emily Swihart: 01:01:06I hope people, consider adding some species to their landscape. The large ones, small ones. Yeah, Cultivar, straight species. It's a really cool plant. So thanks for bringing it to to the podcast.
Chris Enroth: 01:01:20Yeah. Awesome. And Ken, thank you so much also for being here and getting the tattoo that says no regrets about Goldenrod right on your back shoulder. That's that's and you have a dedication to this podcast. Thank you so much.
Ken Johnson: 01:01:33I do what I can. Thank you both, as always. And also we didn't mention, maybe we should have not all Goldenrod are yellow. There's some of the white flowers. True.
Ken Johnson: 01:01:42But people can investigate that on their own because we're out of time.
Chris Enroth: 01:01:45Yep. And some with fall color.
Ken Johnson: 01:01:48Yes. And let's do this again next week.
Chris Enroth: 01:01:52Oh, we shall do this again next week. We're gonna stick with this whole fall theme here. I'm gonna talk about insects in the fall, dealing with the good ones, the bad ones, and the otherwise benign ones. Well, listeners, thank you for doing what you do best, and that is listening, or if you watched us on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing.