By: Rie Macchiarolo, ELA President
Sowing seeds as a way of creating, transforming, and augmenting landscapes is a wonderfully fun and affordable method. It can be quite rewarding after a fall seeding to return to a site in the early spring to find a bunch of seedlings emerging. There are various steps that can be taken before seeding to ensure that you have successful germination and seedling development. But that’s not the focus of this piece. If you want to learn more about site preparation, design and maintenance of a meadow, check out this meadow archives here.
The purpose of this piece is to show a few pictures of some common forbs commonly seeded in meadows in the northeast. There are other good resources out there as well like the NRCS seedling ID guide for prairies plants (Central region) and the NRCS Forb Seedling Identification packet. Check out these guides to learn more!
Here are some pictures of some commonly used forbs:
Agastache foeniculum – Anise Hyssop
Agastache foeniculum (as a seedling)
Asclepias incarnata – Rose/Swamp milkweed
Asclepias tuberosa – Butterfly milkweed
Coreopsis lanceolata – Lanceleaf tickseed
Echinacea purpurea – Coneflower
Eurybia divaricata – White wood aster
Geranium maculatum – Wild geranium
Heliopsis helianthoides – false sunflower
Iris versicolor – blue flag iris
Lupinus perennis – sundial lupine
Monarda fisulosa – wild bergamot
Packera obovata – groundsel
Penstemon digitalis – foxglove beardtongue
Rudbeckia hirta – black eyed susan
Symphyotrichum novae-angliae – New England aster
Verbena hastata – blue vervain
Happy seeding!
