Gardenbite: Martha's Picks: Three native plants for your yard | #GoodGrowing

Welcome to the Good Growing podcast. I am Chris Enroth, horticulture educator with University of Illinois Extension coming at you from Macomb, Illinois, and we have got a garden bite for you this week. We are going to be going back in time, to when we sat down with three horticulturists, landscape designers to chat about their favorite native plants. In this clip, we are going to listen in and watch as Martha Smith, a retired horticulture educator with U of I Extension shares her three favorite native plants. Yes.

We we made her pick her top three, which is, I would say, almost impossible to do, but Martha does. So stay tuned, listen in, or watch as Martha shares her three favorite native plants.

Again, it's it's hard to pick your favorites. So I really just thought about what I have growing in my landscape and what I find, you know, particularly pleasing. I'm really showing you today a plant that has spring interest. There's one that'll be more summer, and there's one that has a fall interest. But this is Kyonanthus virginicus, sometimes called American fringe tree, but it could could be white fringe tree or old man's beard.

And I think it gets its name from from the flowers because they they they're pendulous and they hang down like a like like a white beard. It is in the Olaceae family, and I'll talk about that briefly when I finish up on this one. In the landscape, expect this to get about 15 by 20 feet tall. It will leaf out late up here where I am. It's usually leafing out about mid May and then flowers come on as the leaf the leaves are are expanding.

It has a phenomenal fragrance. I am a person that can't tolerate some fragrance of some of our flowers. I cannot be around hyacinths. I cannot be around paper whites, but this is a scent. I I just I just love love how this that this smells.

Smells great. It is in the Olaceae family and what you might find is, it's related to the ash family or group genus. And there was something out a couple years ago that they were finding emerald ash borer on this, but I have not found anything in recent literature and I might have to refer to Ken on that one. It might have just been a, freak occurrence because I would really hate to lose this. Here's the tree in my yard in bloom just a farther distance shot.

And here is the other thing that I really like about the American fringe tree is its fall color. In my garden, it is this nice yellow gold combination, and the one that I have is, fairly dependable for this to occur every year. The one I have in my yard is a multi trunked, I consider it a small tree. In some places, it could be considered a, like, a sub shrub or something along those lines. It does get a blue droop, and the birds love it.

They're hard to see because they're kind of hidden underneath the foliage, but but birds absolutely love this plant. I was looking up some things about this and what's interesting, I was looking through Michael Durer in his, woody ornamental, manual. And what he has done is is as far as what is native, he lists it, if it was introduced prior to 1750. This plant is considered native to Southern New Jersey, to Florida, and Texas, so it's native to North America, but then he also has it being introduced in 1936. So, again, we're we're back to what's that definition of native and what what does that what does that mean to all of us.

But this is a really, really nice plant. The second one, another tree. This is black tupelo. I, again, love this tree. In the landscape, it's not going to get to be a large tree, maybe between 30 to 50 feet, But there is a champion tree that is in Texas, in Wood County, Texas, that they have, measured at a 10 feet, but that's very, very rare.

And I think what Austin was talking about previously that depending on where it is, depending on the environment, and depending on all the conditions that have led up to this tree's lifetime, You know, some trees are gonna respond differently, the same tree in one situation versus another situation. So, you know, for most of us in our landscape situation, you can anticipate about about 30 to 50 feet. It is one of our most beautiful native trees for its consistent fall color. The shape in youth and remember in youth is a relative term when you talk about a tree, it's going to be pyramidal. And with age, it says that it rounds out and gets to be more flat topped.

I just love this tree when it changes color because it goes through this trend a path where the center turns, and then it goes to the outer portion of the tree. And the tree actually looks like it's glowing. It's just just amazing. This is the first one I had in my landscape, and I say that because we had to transplant this one, and they don't respond well to transplanting. They do have a a taproot.

So the first one we had, we had to transplant it because we're doing some cons construction, and we lost that one. But I think you can see here it's starting to get that pyramidal shape. This is the tree I have now. I just took these pictures this past fall. The one on the left kinda shows you what I mean by the inner portion of it just seems to glow and come out.

Fall color has been described as, yellow to apricot to purple. It's just it's it's to crimson. There there's a combination to it. I've had this now, I think it's going on about twenty years, and I have had not I have had no pest problems with it. I've looked up, you know, pest issues, and there really aren't a lot of pests that seem to bother this tree.

In the summer, you have this glossy, nice, dark green foliage, and then it does this. And it's just beautiful. This also gets a, small blue droop flowers. Really nothing to, you know, say much about, but it does get a droop that, birds do like. So it's it's a very nice tree for a landscape.

And then I went with an herbaceous ornamental. That's my specialty. That's what I've I've studied all these years. And I put in, Asclepias tuberosa or butterfly weed. Now this is going to kind of, you know, get into, you know, natives and, you know, who promotes what.

This was a perennial plant of the year by, voted by the Perennial Plant Association membership. And as a perennial plant association, you know, people think, well, you're just promoting anything that's herbaceous, anything that, you know, exotic or native or whatever. But for this year, the membership felt that this plant was worthy, to have that. And so I just wanna say that we're equal opportunists. We look at natives and we look at non natives.

But this is commonly known as butterfly weed. Once it's established, it can be a long lived perennial. The establishment part is the the challenge, and that's let me talk about that in a minute. It is native to, United States, also goes up into Canada, and it gives us this brilliant orange color. And it just it just stands out.

It's just really a stunning plant. It's not gonna get very large. It's only gonna get about two and a half to three feet tall by maybe two feet wide. And it is in the milkweed family, so it does get the traditional Asclepias flower where you have the five petals up, the five sequels down. And like I said, the one thing people have told me is that it doesn't take for them.

I have it in the front of my house. I have three of them. It is the hottest, driest spot. If you wanna call it a hell strip, that that's what it is. And this has been coming back for me for probably about four years.

The thing is is that they have what they young plants develop from a single central stem, and you've gotta get that central stem to take because then with age, what they do is they tiller, and that's just a way that a plant is sending up more upright, side shoots. So put it in a spot and leave it there. Once it takes, I like I said, a well drained, sunny, hot area. I've spoken to a lot of people that have tried to put it a little more shade or a spot that's getting wet soils, especially as we're going into this, late winter, early spring when we have snow melt and we get a lot of rains. If you have water accumulating around the roots of this plant, it's not gonna be happy for you.

And here's just another picture of it in a nice planting. So those are my three, and if I known I could have snuck in a fourth, I I would have done so.

Oh, those are awesome. I I'm so happy. Chyananthus virginicus was the first plant that I ever learned to identify in my my my foray into the horticultural world. Doc Henry, we stopped by the the building doors to the Ag Building. He said, let's start here at that.

Yeah. No. It's When it's off from there.

When it's in bloom, it's the fragrance is just phenomenal.

And I'll say for the milkweed, I've got mine in our hailstrip, and it's it's been doing good for the last couple years.

Yeah. And have you heard anything about the boar on any other cayonanthus? It was one report. Was it out of Indiana or something like that?

Ohio. Ohio. Okay. That was researcher. I think it was Wright State.

They found some trees. I think they've they found that it is capable of reproducing in French tree, but I haven't heard a whole lot since. In mid late, I haven't really looked for a lot, but I haven't heard a lot of news after kind of the initial buzz about it.

Well, they're saying that the advantage is this is not as widely planted as ash trees. So, you know, they're they're not in in such abundance that, you know, the emerald ash borer can easily, you know, attack it. Though we do have emerald ash borer in our area. I've I've been watching it, watching for any bore holes and and that, but so far, keep your fingers crossed.

Yeah. And Martha, I just I just wanna tack something onto that butterfly weed. You know, I hear a lot of people also say that they have trouble growing it. And I have to wonder if it is maybe the source that they're getting it from, the the size of the containers that they're being grown in. Mhmm.

I've been growing butterfly weed for several years now in tubes that are about eight inches long. Okay. You know, they're they're filled with soil. And, you know, so by the time that I go to transplant them, there are roots all the way to the bottom of that eight inch long tube Mhmm. You know, over the four to five months that, you know, since I had started them.

And I've never had one fail that I've transplanted from those tubes. Whereas if I get and I've I've tried this several times just to test my hypothesis, I'll get one that's got, you know, say a a four inch round, you know, plastic container that you would commonly find at a nursery or something. And when I pull the plant out and it's got those circling roots and I stick that into the ground, you know, I'll still try to break them up. But I I have not had nearly as much success with that. So just just a thought to to tack on to the butterfly weed.

With with your tubes that you're growing them, are they are you air pruning them? Are they open bottomed? I'm just curious because I know that they've done some research with trees are known to be taprooted where they have a mesh on the bottom and the air is actually naturally keeping that taproot from continue and it branches out more. I was just curious.

Yeah. Yeah. No. That's that's exactly right. That that is how the the tubes are designed.

That's cool.

I wish I could remember the the name of the company that we got them from. We got several trays of them, And I think each one holds, 96 of the of the tubes, which is really great in two square feet. You know, it's it's really, really amazing. But, you know, we've had really great success with that. We planted 60 of them at the Red Oak Grain Garden, and every one of them came and and performed incredibly in their first couple of years.

Well, was a lot of great information about white fringetree, black gum, and butterfly milkweed. If you want to see this episode in its entirety, we will leave a link to that below where you can what listen in as Lane and Austin both share their top three native plant picks and hint hint, they actually wind up squeezing in a few extra ones too. The Good Grown Road podcast is a production of University of Illinois Extension, edited this week by me, Chris Enroth. And a special thank you to our listeners who do what you do best, which is listening, or if you're watching us on YouTube watching. And as always, keep on growing.