Female winterberry flowers: each one has a green ovary at its center that can become a berry, but only if pollen from a male plant
A young purple coneflower seedling with its two rounded seed leaves and first true leaf. At this size it can vanish overnight. Photo: PhytoplanktonSandwich, Wikimedia
Your baseline: a normal purple coneflower head, with a domed cone of spiny florets and drooping rays. Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Photo: Rhododendrites, Wikimedia Commons (CC
What you’re hoping for: a full clump with many flowering stems. Dawes Arboretum, Ohio. Photo: James St. John, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0) Your purple
A monarch caterpillar on common milkweed, with the leaf tip already chewed away. On milkweed, a hole in a leaf is often a sign of
Sassafras in full red fall color along the Gore Vista Trail, Cameron County, Pennsylvania. The same colors in July or August mean something different. Photo:
Fringetree fruit ripening from green through pink to dark blue in July. E.O. Siecke State Forest, Texas. Photo: sonnia hill, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
Common milkweed seedlings grown indoors in a tray, with short stems and their first pairs of true leaves. Photo: Gilles Ayotte, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA
What you’re hoping for: a sunny bed of dense blazing star in full late-July bloom, UMCS Botanical Garden, Lublin. Photo: Salicyna, Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA
A young sassafras settled into a wide mulched bed at Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens, Savannah. Most drooping problems after planting start below that mulch. Photo:
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