vandaliatraveler:Appalachian Summer, 2018, Volume Eight: Common Buttonbush. As Appalachia’s bu
vandaliatraveler:Appalachian Summer, 2018, Volume Eight: Common Buttonbush. As Appalachia’s butterfly and bee magnets go, you can hardly do better than common buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), a spreading, deciduous shrub in the coffee family. Adapted to grow in the moist soil of wetland habitats, especially marshes and stream banks, buttonbush rivals and perhaps even exceeds milkweed in sheer wildlife value. An enormous variety of insects (including bees and butterflies) and hummingbirds seek the nectar from the plant’s unusual, button-like flowers, composed of numerous tubular corollas with protruding pistils fused to tightly-bunched sepals. The flowers are followed by nutlets, whose seeds are consumed by waterfowl and other birds. In addition to making a lovely (albeit somewhat rangy and irregular) ornamental shrub in native plant landscapes, the plant is used for erosion control and is cultivated as a “honey plant” by beekeepers. Due to the profusion of clustered, spherical flowers produced by the shrub in early summer and its popularity as a honey plant, buttonbush is occasionally referred to as honey bells.This is my favorite shruby plant. I know tge correct name but I call it “poof ball plant”. -- source link
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