Pollinator Favorite Fireweed

Fireweed, burnweed, pilewort, the plant is native to the Americas and a member of the Asteracea family that has many of my favorite asters, daisies and other similar flowers, but this plant is homely and brash, moving in and growing tall, on one stem, quickly, and when the flowers are ready to go to seed each one opens with more fluff than a couple of dandelions. One plant can produce hundreds of flower that sprout and grow anywhere in any soil with practically no water and still produce, and even though it’s a native it’s so prolific and enough of it interrupts crops it’s considered a pest, at least. What a rude visitor to the garden!

But pollinators love it. I’ve read that wasps are its primary pollinator but here you see a nice fat bumblebee, which is what I see most often since it always finds an opportunity in my yard. I like the fluff in autumn when it catches the lower angle of the sun, it glows as it floats away looking like a seraphic messenger, and its message is coming frosty nights, shorter days, the resting time of winter.

It’s often the first plant to show up after a fire, hence fireweed or burnweed. It was used by Native Americans as a salve for poison ivy and other rashes. “Pilewort” has an obvious connection as this name in English translates to “hemorrhoid plant,” one of the other medicinal uses.

I let some of my vegetable beds go in the hottest weather rather than plant something that would struggle to sprout in those conditions, and of course that welcomed this fireweed plant which is now taller than me. But I like to watch those fat bumblebees bumble around on the flowers.

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