Common Name: Hardy Mist Flower^[1]

Scientific Name: Eupatorium coelestinum

Description: Late summer flowering, North American perennial; deep blue, mist-like flowers in late summer and autumn; attractive burgundy stems

Size: Plants grow to 3 feet high and 4-5 feet wide; spreads by underground runners

Cultural Information: Prefers full sun to light shade and moist, rich loam; pinch back in early summer for a bushier plant

USDA Zones: 3 through 9

Historical Notes: This handsome North American member of the Aster family occurs naturally in low moist ground, moist wooded slopes, savannahs, and along streams from New Jersey to Minnesota and the West Indies. The species listed in the British Botanical Magazine in 1730 and appears in Philadelphia nurseryman John Bartram's broadside catalogue in 1793. Also known as Hardy Ageratum, this species resembles the cultivated annual Ageratum houstonianum, from Mexico. In 1851, New England garden writer Joseph Breck called it "the most beautiful" Eupatorium.^[2] Its late-season blooms attract bees and swallowtail butterflies.

Footnotes

1. ↑ This article is based on a Center for Historic Plants Information Sheet.
2. ↑ The Flower Garden: Or, Breck's Book of Flowers (Published by A. O. Moore, 1859), 119.

Further Sources

• Leighton, Ann. American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1986
• McMahon, Bernard. The American Gardener's Calendar, 1806 Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 1997. See pp. 602
• Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants

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