I started some cool perennials from seed last year – a yellow foxglove (digitalis), Verbena hastata, swamp milkweed, and a lupine who limps along rather unhappily in my hot and dry Chicago yard. I’ve also started some other cool perennials but couldn’t keep track of them. Purple prairie clover, that Sporobolus grass that smells like cotton candy when it blooms, and wild blue indigo all started out healthy but grew so slowly I eventually couldn’t keep track of them (to water or weed around). Every once in a while, someone proudly parents a perennial, nurturing it through thick and thin, only to find out that it wasn’t the plant they thought after all. My friend Chal, an adept seed-starter, once had fancy clematis coming up nicely. She generously shared one with me and I felt fancy about it, too, until it turned out to be morning glory. This year I bought a Wild Senna from my friends at Paseo Prairie Garden here in Logan Square. They ordered it from Midwest Groundcovers, who recently bought little Natural Gardens in St. Charles. I knew Natural Gardens because they had some rare perennials; when the Wild Senna was available, I felt compelled to try it out. My own yard is full so I planted in the parkway three houses west of me. It’s even hotter and dryer in that parkway than around my house, and the directions for the Senna said to give it “extra summer water.” I’ve been lugging 5 gallon buckets of water over there for a month, only to find out yesterday that the plant wasn’t Wild Senna at all. It’s something called fleabane, a weed that pollinators like but many gardeners pull up at will. I doubt that anyone would go out of their way to water fleabane, if they knew what it was anyway.
Wild Senna looks like this:
What I’ve been watering in the parkway, and just now started to bloom, is Fleabane:
Deep Roots on Belden Ave 
Hi, this is a comment.
To delete a comment, just log in, and view the posts’ comments, there you will have the option to edit or delete them.
I like the idea of having people identify a “mystery plant” Please add some more posts and some photographs of your garden and some of the neighborhood gardens that you are involved with.
me too on the forgetting the perennials that I planted – really the worst thing is that I have weeded out a zillion natives that I planted then think they are weeds as they were coming up. A couple of years ago I decided that waiting until the weed flowered (as long as i got it before it became seed) might not be so bad and that is how I found the very beautiful lobelia cardinalis that I must have planted a couple of years hence. Love your blog
I like the looks of the Fleabane. But no more extra water for it, eh? I chuckled about the Morning Glory. I look forward to reading (and learning) more.
I like to think about the fact that plants that were the glorious perennials of yesteryear , are now the weeds. Like plaintain, dandelions, pokeweed, which are all sometimes cool and nice to look at, but now so much a part of the weedy, empty lot landscape that they are not appreciated, or used. perhaps you can find a use for the fleabane that you couldn’t have with the senna. perhaps it is the bane of fleas?and you can put it on your cats or dogs…….