Carolina or Yellow Jessamine, Gelsemium sempervirens, is a stunning evergreen vine native to the southern United States and Mexico south to Guatemala. In Virginia, Carolina Jessamine is a coastal beauty, common along the southern and central Coastal Plain north to Lancaster and Northampton Counties but rare in the adjacent outer Piedmont.

In honor of our Pop-up field trip to see the very early blooming Bloodroot just beginning to bloom in member’s Lucy and Frank’s beautiful woodland garden, I thought Bloodroot would be the perfect plant for our March Plant of the Month.

One of the earliest signs of spring is the bloom of the Round-lobed Hepatica or Liverleaf, Hepatica americana. The lovely small flowers of this woodland wildflower look fragile but this hardy perennial blooms in the face of winter often in February. An array of adaptations helps it survive this period of winter-spring.

As we celebrated the New Year with our annual New Year’s Day walk at Hickory Hollow NAP, many participants were intrigued by a small, common terrestrial orchid, the Cranefly Orchid, Tipularia discolor, that greeted us along the paths. Some were even more surprised to realize they had this orchid growing on their own properties! Oddly, this orchid is unique in having dark green leaves that appear in mid fall and remain handsome and dark green through the winter months despite the vagaries of winter weather and then wither away in late spring and early summer when the canopy closes overhead.

Our evergreen Wax Myrtle or Southern Bayberry is handsome in every season of the year but it particularly sparkles in the winter after the leaves of deciduous trees have fallen leaving a gray and brown landscape.

Everything about the November Plant of the Month is distinctive and picturesque. This small to mid-sized tree typically grows to about 35 - 60’ with crooked artistic branches, broad rounded crown, and pendulous lower branches - similar in structure to a Japanese Bonsai.

At our recent fall plant sale a number of shoppers requested shade tolerant perennials that bloom in shady woodland gardens in late summer and fall, long after spring bloomers have faded. The October Plant of the Month, Blue-stemmed Goldenrod, Solidago caesia, fits the bill beautifully and like other Goldenrods, has the added benefit of supporting a large variety of pollinators and butterflies.

Little Bluestem is one of our finest native grasses and was once one of the dominant grasses of the vast Tallgrass Prairies that covered much of central North America. This beautiful warm-season perennial is one of the most widespread grasses in our area and found in nearly every county in Virginia.

Blue Vervain, Verbena hastata is the August Plant of the Month and enhances any landscape in which it grows. It is one of my favorite mid to late summer native perennials for any number of reasons.

Turk’s-cap Lily, Lilium superbum, is one of our most spectacular wildflowers in eastern North America. Its stunning flowers bloom right now in July and August. Native to wet meadows and rich moist cove forests and bogs from New Hampshire south to Georgia and Alabama, it is found in most counties in Virginia.

One of my favorite Northern Neck native perennials, Yellow Wild Indigo, Baptisia tinctoria, is coming into bloom right now and its neat, compact habit fits the bill for many requests for low maintenance, small, native plants.

Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Arisaema triphyllum, is one of our most intriguing and curious woodland wildflowers and is blooming now.

The April Plant of the Month, Pawpaw, Asimina triloba, is a handsome small tree that is as fascinating as it is curious. Pawpaw is a member of the Custard-Apple Family, the Annonaceae, a large family of tropical and subtropical species.

Trout Lily is one of our earliest woodland wildflowers to bloom each spring with exquisite nodding yellow flowers with back-swept petals. The entire plant is only 4 -6” high with smooth lance to oblong gray-green leaves exquisitely mottled with purplish brown, supposedly resembling dappled coloring of a Brook Trout.