After leading my annual Audubon Society of the Everglades birding field trip to Green Cay this November 28, I made my annual stop at Native Choice Nursery. They weren’t yet open for the day, but they’d left out exactly what I wanted: Climbing Aster (Aster carolinianus). I paid in the main office (a bargain at $5 each) and put them in the ground in the morning, watered them in, and left for the beach.
They’re basically a wetland plant in the wild, but one of my books tells me that they’re pretty adaptable, so I put them in along a fence (to give them something to climb) next to another climbing vine-type plant, Coral Honeysuckle (Lonicera sempervirens), which is another plant that starts to sulk when I neglect to hit it with the hose every few days.
Here’s a photo from Craig Huegel’s excellent blog, hawthornhillwildflowers.blogspot.com (he’s also written several recent books on various types of Florida native plants):
Here’s hoping mine do half as well. The more photogenic of the two I picked up is below:
Neither of the plants I bought had lovely blooms on them. I did this deliberately, because those typically drop off very soon after planting, leaving me disappointed. And the blooming season of these plants is very late, so I’m hoping that by putting it next to the summer-blooming Coral Honeysuckle I’ll have blooms even in the dead of “winter” here.
Plus, asters are the larval host plant family for the Pearl Crescent, so I’m hoping this planting will take off and provide some food for those lovely little guys.