Like so many of our native plants, the virtues of the Rudbeckias were recognized by English gardeners centuries before they were considered worthy of inclusion in American flower gardens. That’s right. Centuries.
According to the National Garden Bureau, British plant collector John Tradescant received the roots of Rudbeckia laciniata from French New World settlers in the early 1600s. By the mid-1800s, enthusiasm for this and others among the 25 Rudbeckia species – all native to North America – had been transplanted back to their native land, where Rudbeckias had became “the darling of the ladies who are partial to yellow.”
I’m no more partial to yellow than flowers of other colors. What makes me partial to the Rudbeckias is that they stay in bloom for weeks, from mid-summer to early fall, are easy to grow, require little care, self-seed and, once established, are drought- and deer-resistant. If you share those prejudices, consider adding these cheerful flowers to your landscape.
Chances are, you know some Rudbeckias already, although probably not by that name. Almost everyone recognizes R. hirta – Black-eyed Susans – that grow along roadsides and in fields. Members of the Aster family, other wild Rudbeckias native to the Blue Ridge include Orange (R. fulgida), Thinleaf (R. triloba) and Cutleaf (or Green-headed) Coneflower, the perennial whose roots Tradescant received. A widely-cultivated R. hirta, the Gloriosa Daisy, has large flowers with rays that are often bi-colored – yellow and mahogany, red or bronze. I never realized until I set out to write this article that the Golden Glow that grows near my mother’s sunporch in Vermont, whose bleached stems I remove on my Thanksgiving visits are a cultivated R. laciniata, whose variety ‘Hortensia’ or ‘Golden Glow’ was introduced in 1894 and is “still seen around old homesteads,” according to one of my garden books.
A few years ago, studying the activity in a butterfly garden at the John C. Campbell Folk School, it slowly dawned on me that butterflies aren’t all drawn to the same flowers. Like people, they have their favorites. While some blooming plants appeal to a wide variety of butterflies – milkweed flowers, for instance, draw fritillaries, swallowtails, monarchs and many others – some seem only to attract one or two butterfly species. In my experience, that’s true of the Rudbeckias. I have two distinctly different varieties in my yard: a Black-eyed Susan type, with very dark green leaves, and a bed of Gloriosa Daisies, much taller, with hairier stems and paler leaves. Where the Black-eyed Susan type came from I can’t remember, although I’ve transplanted them all over the yard and given many plants away; the Gloriosa Daisies I started from seed two or three years ago.
Small bees love Rudbeckias, but the only butterflies I’d ever seen visiting them were small orange and black butterfly called Pearl Crescents (although one of my butterfly gardening books says R. laciniata attracts fritillaries, blues, viceroys and monarchs). Thinking I would call this column “Make a Pearl Crescent’s Day,” I moseyed down to a clump of Black-eyed Susans on a sunny afternoon to take some photographs. Waiting for the butterflies to settle, I noticed that the butterflies came in two distinct sizes: small and slightly larger. Some seemed forever to be pumping their wings, while others held still once they’d landed on a flower. I didn’t think much about these differences until, consulting “Butterflies through Binoculars” on the subject of Pearl Crescents, I saw Silvery Checkerspot listed as one of three “similar species.” Never seen one of those, I thought, and almost idly looked it up. What jumped out: “Larger than Pearl Crescent.”
Looking at my photographs, most appeared not to be Pearl Crescents but Silvery Checkerspots. The two look virtually identical. For years I’ve been misidentifying Silvery Checkerspots as Pearl Crescents. From now on, I’ll look more closely. “Count a day lost when you don’t learn something,” my grandmother used to say. For me, August 8 was not a day lost.
Silvery Checkerspots
Not only do Silvery Checkerspots enjoy Rudbeckias in bloom, their caterpillars feed on their foliage. While Pearl Crescents feed on asters as caterpillars, the Silvery Checkerspot lays its eggs on a host of composites, among them Wing-stem, sunflowers, asters and Black-eyed Susans. If in spring, you notice a host of small black caterpillars covered with spikes feeding on the foliage of your Rudbeckias, those “pests” are your future Silvery Checkerspot butterflies. Look for the caterpillars on the leaves’ undersides. If you disturb them, they’re quick to curl up and drop to the ground. Two broods occur annually throughout the Blue Ridge (in North Carolina, the first appears in May, the second in July and early August).
