By Kevin Pride. Autumn’s arrival with fall blooming, nectar-rich plants that help fuel migrating monarchs — and save water too! Even if the weather still feels summerlike, all the telltale signs of autumn are starting to appear: Pumpkin spice everything, mums at the market and (before long) the arrival of our first actual “cold snap.”
You can add WaterSaver Landscape Coupons to the list of familiar fall favorites — after all, autumn is the best time to start planting!
Since grass usually needs the most water to look its best, adding or expanding flowering landscape beds now is a great way to lower landscape water demands while preserving a neighborhood-friendly aesthetic.
To everything there is a season, and no one knows this better than the monarch butterfly. Every autumn we are graced with the southward migration of this charming migrant. If you want to help these travelers, turfgrass won’t do it — butterflies need nectar.
Fall blooming, nectar-rich plants give them the fuel they need to complete their migration to Mexico. Mistflowers are at the top of the list for attracting butterflies, but there is a lesser-known mistflower that’s common to our area but rare in the nursery trade: pink thoroughwort (Fleischmannia incarnata).
Blooming from October through December, it’s a crucial nectar source for migrating monarchs and many other pollinators. The blooms are white and fuzzy (with a faint pink hue), like fragrant mistflower or late-flowering boneset, which are also favorite food sources for pollinators.
In fact, thoroughworts, bonesets and mistflowers are all in the same plant family (in this case, “thorough” is an old-fashioned word for how the stems appear to go “through” the pairs of opposite leaves).
Wondering where you can find it? Native Texas nurseries may carry it, but it might be in your yard already. I often encounter pink thoroughwort while doing irrigation consultations in brand new neighborhoods, where it hitches a ride in recently installed Bermuda grass sod.
It can be easy to miss, but once you know what to look for pink thoroughwort is recognizable by its cute, triangular leaves that are light-bright green. Most commonly seen on the sides of houses where it gets part sun and part shade, pink thoroughwort is versatile and tough, tolerates a wide variety of soils and doesn’t mind being mowed.
In the wild, it can be seen sprawling or leaning on fences or nearby shrubs for support, reaching 5 feet or more. It is usually more diminutive and does fine by itself out in the open where it is much shorter.
This fall, use your WaterSaver Landscape Coupon to create a garden that saves water and serves as a waystation for migrating monarchs. Pair pink thoroughwort with scarlet sage, zexmenia, frogfuit, rock rose, frostweed and plateau goldeneye.
Kevin is a SAWS Conservation Field Investigator and a self-proclaimed nature boy. He has a background in restoration ecology and is zealous about native plant landscapes that use zero irrigation. Kevin spends his free time deep underground surveying caves or hiking barefoot with his daughter, Daisy, and their dog.
