Amsonia Species, Eastern Bluestar, Willow Amsonia, Woodland Blue Star

While I prefer A. hubrichtii, this is still a very attractive plant and adapts well. Blooms in May in my garden.

I find this plant useful in a fair bit of shade as well as in sun (I do trim it back a bit mid-summer if it looks floppy), and it hasn't ...Read Morebeen all that fussy about soil moisture--in short, it's adaptable and reliable. The blooms are pretty, and they last very well as cut flowers; the foliage is also attractive after the blooming stops. I'm putting it in more places in my garden, and it helpfully reseeds at a very polite speed, providing me with expansion plants without taking over.

I've received seeds of it a few years ago.. I'm sorry I don't know which DG member has sent me seeds of these..I want to thank her or him...Read More for this pretty plant. It took about three years to flower from seed. Now it is flowering for its third season and even more abundant than last year. It has a very neat round habit and its scented flowers are so delicate pale blue..very pretty. It dies back in wintertime and emerges in spring with fresh vivid green foliage..soon it shows its (by that time) dark blue flower buds. Last winter we had temps that dropped to -20C for weeks that did not harm it at all.
Remove seedpods if you don't want any unvoluntary seedlings. When still small seedlings are easy to pull up. They root relatively deep.
Take care when handling plants. The milky white sap can irritate the skin.

I'm always looking for more fairly tall native plants to add to the back of my dry, windy, sunny border. Last year the local nursery's m...Read Moreanager said that she thought it would adapt to this site despite the common recommendation being that this plant grows best in humusy, moist soil. When I planted it, it nearly immediately lost all its leaves and appeared thereafter to have died, so I didn't see any point in moving it to a new location to see if it could recover. This spring I was shocked to see it sprout. It started out slowly but then rapidly caught up to the size of other area amsonias. It's now blooming its gorgeous flowers. It's adapted perfectly to the site and this year it is robust and healthy. I can hardly think of a more resilient plant for the garden.