The scientific name of the genus, Maianthemum, means May (Mai) and flower (anthemon). How appropriate for our May Plant of the Month as this lovely herbaceous perennial blooms across rich deciduous forests and woodlands of Canada and all the contiguous states from late April to June, peaking in May. Eastern Solomon’s-plume occurs in every county in Virginia and is common throughout in a diverse range of moist to dry upland forests and woodlands, well-drained floodplain forests, and clearings.

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The cheerful flowers of our native Common Blue Violet are one of the most anticipated signs of spring, bringing joy to both gardeners and pollinators alike. Blooming from March to June, with occasional rebloom in fall, our Common Blue Violet reaches only 3 – 8” tall with showy violet-blue flowers with white throats and intricate purple veining.

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Plantain-leaved Pussytoes is one of our most charming perennial groundcovers and begins blooming this month with fuzzy white, tufted flowerheads that resemble the toes or paws of kittens. Other names for this charming groundcover are Pussytoes, Everlasting, Mouse Ears, Ladies’ Tobacco, and even Dog Toes.

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Our February Plant of the Month, American Hazelnut or Filbert, Corylus americana, is one of our earliest blooming native shrubs, a true harbinger of spring often flaunting its flowers as early as February. As a member of the Birch (Betulaceae) family, American Hazelnut is monoecious, meaning it has separate male and female flowers on the same plant

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Ebony Spleenwort is a charming small, evergreen fern that grows in dense tufts with dark green narrow fronds with a distinctive, wiry dark reddish brown shiny main stem (stipe). In fact, it gets its common name, Ebony, from this very distinctive dark shiny stipe.

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Common Tree-clubmoss, often called Princess Pine, is appropriately named as each plant looks like a miniature pine tree and a colony resembles a miniature forest. Club mosses are ancient plants and evolved over 400 million years ago and reproduce by spores produced in “club-like” structures.

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One of the earliest and most reliable trees for fall color is our gorgeous Black Gum, Nyssa sylvatica. This native deciduous tree reliably ignites into fiery shades of scarlet and occasionally red, orange, even purple in the fall, often by late September. Not only does it color early but its spectacular color often lasts for up to a month or more, outlasting many other trees.

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In late August and September, Purple Lovegrass casts a lovely purplish haze over the roadsides and low fields. This lowgrowing, warm season bunch grass lights up the early fall landscape with airy clouds of small reddish-purple flowers that seem to float above the dense tufts of low foliage that grows only 6 -12” high. The airy inflorescence has an intricate whorled branching structure with three delicate wiry stems rising from the main pedicel and holds the small flowers, then seeds, above the foliage reaching 12 – 20” high.

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Great Blue Lobelia is a lovely late-blooming perennial in the Bellflower family that flaunts tall blue spires of flowers for weeks on end in the late summer-fall. Also called Blue Cardinal Flower or just Great Lobelia, this relative of the well-known red Cardinal Flower is native to most of eastern North America and is naturally found in moist to wet habitats such as floodplain forests, moist cove and slope forests, seeps, stream banks and bars, and wet meadows, often over limestone or calcium-rich soils.

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One of my all-time favorite pollinator plants, Short-toothed Mountain-mint, has just recently been added to the flora of the Northern Neck and I am thrilled to include it as the July Plant of the Month. Several large populations of this incredible pollinator powerhouse were recently discovered near Fone’s Cliff in Westmoreland County and are now listed in the Virginia Digital Atlas for this county.

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The showy white flowerheads of American Elderberry can reach up to 10% across American Elderberry is a common, deciduous shrub that lights up our landscape from mid-May through June with huge and profuse clusters of white flowers that literally form a lacy veil over the shrub.

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