Hardy Mist Flower
Conoclinium cœlestinum (formerly Eupatorium cœlestinum)
A North American member of the aster family.
This handsome North American member of the aster family occurs naturally in low moist ground and savannahs, on moist wooded slopes, and along streams from New Jersey to Minnesota and in the West Indies. The species was listed in a British botanical magazine in 1730 and appeared 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.1 Its late-season blooms attract bees and swallowtail butterflies.
- Peggy Cornett, n.d.
Further Sources
- Leighton, Ann. American Gardens in the Eighteenth Century. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986.
- McMahon, Bernard. The American Gardener's Calendar, 1806. Charlottesville: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 1997. See page 602.
- Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants.
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Heirloom Seeds and Plants from the Monticello collection
Plant history in your gardens with seeds and plants from Monticello and the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants.
Footnotes
- Joseph Breck, The Flower Garden: Or, Breck's Book of Flowers, new ed., rev. and enl. (New York: A. O. Moore, 1858), 119.