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Perennials » Silphium
4 items found. Click on photo/text link for more information on any product.

Silphium
We can’t think of a better introduction to Silphium than to quote Aldo Leopold writing about a country graveyard in Wisconsin, in Sand County Almanac: “Heretofore unreachable by scythe or mower, this yard- square relic of original Wisconsin gives birth, each July, to a man-high stalk of compass plant or cutleaf Silphium, spangled with saucer-sized yellow blooms resembling sunflowers. It is the sole remnant of this plant along this highway, and perhaps the sole remnant in the western half of our county. What a thousand acres of Silphium looked like when they tickled the bellies of the buffalo is a question never again to be answered, and perhaps not even asked. . . . “When I passed the graveyard again on 3 August, the fence had been removed by a road crew, and the Silphium cut. It is easy now to predict the future; for a few years my Silphium will try in vain to rise above the mowing machine, and then it will die. With it will die the prairie epoch. . . . “If I were to tell a preacher of the adjoining church that the road crew has been burning history books in his cemetery, under the guise of mowing weeds, he would be amazed and uncomprehending. How could a weed be a book? This is one little episode in the funeral of the native flora, which in turn is one episode in the funeral of the floras of the world. Mechanized man, oblivious of floras, is proud of his progress in cleaning up the landscape on which, willy-nilly, he must live out his days. It might be wise to prohibit at once all teaching of real botany and real history, lest some future citizen suffer qualms about the floristic price of his good life.”

SILPHIUM laciniatum
(C8) Large, bristly, deeply pinnate (laciniate) leaves ascend the rough stem, giving rise to a flower stalk up to 8 feet in height. Yellow sunflowers. The basal leaves are arranged, orienting themselves north and south, thus "compass plant". more info

SILPHIUM mohrii

SILPHIUM perfoliatum
(C8) Square stems and pairs of cup-forming leaves, this prairie native has 3-inch lemon yellow sunflowers on 4-8 foot stalks. Leaves are opposite and are fused around the stem forming a cup that collects rainwater. more info

SILPHIUM terebinthinaceum
(C8) Masses of yellow sunflower-like blooms appear on giant stalks in late summer for a month or longer. With leaves like small elephant ears and flowers literally as high as an elephant's eye, Prairie Dock is a truly unique plant. more info