Saturday, July 2, 2011

You Never Know if Something is Dead


It just goes to show you that you never know when a plant is truly dead. Take for instance the Butterfly Weed pictured above. I planted it last year along with two other plants, an extra from the Friends Plant Sale, because I don't like to waste good plants. All three seemed to disappear by early fall and it didn't seem like they were coming back this spring.

You can only imagine my surprise when I walked out one day to see two of the plants sticking out of the ground. It was like they grew five inches over night.  I had a few of these planted in a different location, but none of them ever survived as it was just too wet. Hopefully these hang in there and give me a good display.

So my best advice is to wait a little bit longer if you think a plant is dead, maybe even another season, as you could discover that the only thing wrong is that the plant prefers a later bloom time.

4 comments:

ictero said...

You've given me hope - I had butterfly weed in three different places last year. I suspected it was too wet for them, but hoped for the best. There's been no sign of them, so I'm assuming they're done for. But maybe ... just maybe?

Michael said...

"You Never Know if Something is Dead"

And doubly so if it's a weed :-/

It's really amazing the abuse plants manage to live through. I had a grape vine I was sure had died (rabbit attack this winter) and it's bigger than it was last year already.

Amy Andrychowicz said...

Ha, the same thing happened with mine and suddenly they were blooming! :-) My poppy plant died right after I planted it in the spring... and to my delight came back the next year. Some plants are mysterious.

Amy

Jennifer Kirby said...

This week I have blossoms on it! Oh, I hope this plant keeps ticking.