Natives For Your Neighborhood
Conservation of rare plants, animals, and ecosystems

General Landscape Uses: Primarily recommended for natural landscapes and habitat restorations. Also wet wildflower and butterfly gardens.

Availability: Grown by enthusiasts and occasionally by native plant nurseries.

Description: Small to medium herbaceous wildflower.

Dimensions: About 1-3 feet in height. Taller than broad.

Growth Rate: Moderate to fast.

Range: Southeastern United States west to Texas and south to the Monroe County Keys; West Indies, Mexico and Central America. Very rare in the Monroe County Keys and perhaps absent from the middle Keys.

Map of select IRC data from peninsular Florida.

Habitats: Marshes and wet pinelands.

Soils: Wet to moist, moderately well-drained to periodically inundated sandy, limestone, or organic soils, with or without humusy top layer.

Nutritional Requirements: Moderate; can grow in nutrient poor soils, but needs some organic content to thrive.

Salt Water Tolerance: Moderate; tolerates brackish water or occasional inundation by salt water.

Salt Wind Tolerance: Moderate; grows near salt water, but is protected from direct salt spray by other vegetation.

Drought Tolerance: Low; requires moist to wet soils and is intolerant of long periods of drought.

Light Requirements: Full sun.

Flower Color: Pale pink to rose.

Flower Characteristics: Semi-showy.

Flowering Season: Spring-summer.

Fruit: Inconspicuous achene.

Wildlife and Ecology: Nectar plant for gray hairstreak (Strymon melinus) and other butterflies.

Horticultural Notes: Can be grown from seed.

Comments: Horticultural synonyms: P. rosea.