Baptisia tinctoria

Sizes available: HPP #1, two plants per pot

Basics: zones 3-9, full to part sun, 24"+ x 24"+, yellow to pale yellow cream in mid-summer, wants medium moist to dry lean, sandy or loamy soils with good drainage

Common names: Yellow Wild Indigo, Yellow False Indigo

Family: Fabaceae

Origin/Distribution: eastern North America, native to the southern tip of Maine and the rest of New England. This plant is widely distributed but endangered in some of it's range, including Maine, so if you have a sunny, low-nutrition, well-drained site, please grow this.

Habitat: dry meadow, open and lean woodlands, sandy soils, sandhills

More: B. tinctoria is host to numerous butterfly and moth larvae including the Io moth (Automeris io), the Frosted Elfin (Callophrys irus) and the Wild Indigo Duskywing Skipper (Erynnis baptisiae) all of which call Maine their home. Flowers later than other Baptisias, nitrogen fixer, sensitive to juglone, deer resistant, has been used medicinally and also as a substitute for Indigo (Indigofera tinctoria) in making blue dye. I imagine it makes a good addition to the vase, both the leaves and flowers. Like all Baptisias a bit slow to get going as it develops it's taproot and resents being transplanted once established.

Nursery: Landscape plugs from New Moon Wholesale Nursery.NJ

Image credit: single flower from Wikimedia Commons; overall plant form from Jelitto Staudensamen GmbH; illustration from Wikimedia Commons