They're too big for the bed I have them in, but they're annuals, so I plan to grow them by the fence next year, with the rose mallows and passion vines.

Scarlet Cupleaf Beardtongue/Murray's Penstemon, Penstemon murrayanus. Bright red flowers on tall purple stems with blue-green waxy leaves encircling the stems.

A pretty brown and orange butterfly with dramatic large eyespots sits with wings spread on non-native (in US) blue cornflower. Common Buckeye, Junonia coenia.

A green garden scene with tall magenta winecup flowers in front, red penstemons in the middle distance, and an old wooden fence in the background. Tall Winecups, Callirhoe leiocarpa, annual.

More scenes from the garden today. IDs in alt text. #nativeplants #butterflies 🌱 #gardening #bloomscrolling

A row of four basketflowers that haven't bloomed yet in a bed with other flowers. The big plant is third from the left.

There are also several in the bed next to the fence that look like this--one stem with no foliage on the bottom and pointed leaves.

A seedling basketflower growing in a container, a small rosette of thick pale green leaves that are slightly toothed around the edges.

So now that I know the giant mystery plant is a American Basketflower, it turns out I have several, just not so giant. I'll update when they bloom. Plectocephalus americanus, formerly Centaurea. #nativeplants #gardening 🌱

Left to right: Fuzzy Phacelia, Phacelia hirsuta; Perfumeballs, Gaillardia suavis with a furrow bee; Annual Winecups, Callirhoe leiocarpa with black Tiger Swallowtail; Western Daisy, Astranthium ciliatum with mining bee, Prairie Verbena, Glandularia bipinnatifida with Hoary Edge skipper, and Scarlet Cupleaf Beardtongue, Penstemon murrayanus with an Eastern Leaf-footed bug. Couldn't find a picture of the phacelia with a bug friend but it gets lots of teeny bees.

I finally have six native plants blooming for #SixonSaturday. #nativeplants #gardening 🌱

A small dark brown butterfly sits on top of a round cluster of light purple flowers with its long tongue in one of the flowers. The butterfly has dashes of bright orange on its top wings and a wide band of iridescent white along the edge of the bottom wing. Achalarus lyciades and Glandularia bipinnatifida. Oklahoma Northern Crosstimbers ecoregion 29a.

A Hoary Edge Skipper on Prairie Verbena today. Their caterpillars eat native plants in the legume family. #butterflies #butterflyweek #insectthursday #nativeplants

An orange butterfly sits on a small round red flower with wings outspread. Its top wings have a black and orange tumbling blocks design and black wing tips dotted with white. (The orange rectangle with a white dot inside on each top wing is an easy way to tell it is an American Lady and not a Painted Lady.) The lower wings have a row of small blurry blue eyespots along the bottom and a slash of reflective yellow through the center. The antennae have white tips. Vanessa virginiensis. The flower is Gaillardia suavis, Perfumeballs.

An American Lady. #Butterflies #Butterflyweek #InsectThursday #invertebrates

Fuzzy Phacelia (Phacelia hirsuta) flowering spray starting to bloom. Two small five-petaled lavender flowers with white centers are open and the rest are clustered like grapes on the curling stem. Annual.

A large black dark-morph Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly feeds on a lavender Prairie verbena flower, wings partly open. Papilio glaucus and Glandularia bipinnatifida .

Another view of the back of the butterfly's outspread wings. She seems to have longer tails than average, I thought maybe she was a Two-tailed Swallowtail, but they don't come in black. She's just a little extra.

Tall Winecups (Callirhoe leiocarpa) blooming in the afternoon sun. Tall plants with palmate leaves and magenta cup-shaped flowers with white stamens on slender stems. This is a winter annual that can form a dense groundcover. Northern Cross Timbers ecoregion 29a.

Scenes from Saturday afternoon. It's raining today. Fuzzy Phacelia starting to bloom, an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail, and Tall Winecups. #nativeplants #gardening #butterflies 🌱 #bloomscrolling

Thank you 😊

Partridge Pea seedling with a little fan of leaves coming from the top. Chamaecrista fasciculata.

Pale coneflower, Echinacea pallida. I accidentally sowed all of these in the ground, so I've been staring at them the most. Yesterday I separated the twins in the back successfully.

Snowflake-shaped Bitter Sneezeweed, Helenium amarum. Doesn't deserve the crappy name. Will be a very nice plant covered in small yellow daisy flowers.

Fuzzy Phacelia, Phacelia hirsuta. These in the native soil are small, but the one that came up in the raised bed is starting to bloom already. Hopefully, these will catch up.

Some seedlings for everyone else who is spending a lot of time staring at the dirt. Partridge Pea, Pale Coneflower, Bitter Sneezeweed, and Fuzzy Phacelia. #nativeplants #gardening 🌱

Sprouts of Swamp Rose Mallow, Hibiscus moscheutos. This one is growing outside the bed in the grass.

Grassy shoots of Prairie Blazing Star, Liatris pycnostachya.

Shoots of Butterfly Weed, Asclepias tuberosa. Some of these got uprooted because I left the stems on, then I think the dog chrged through and uprooted them. I'm not leaving the stems on this year, they look bad anyway.

Maypop, Passiflora incarnata. Pull them straight up once they're big enough (like this) to get a grip. The original plant will sprout a week or two later than the runners. Oklahoma Northern Crosstimbers ecoregion 29a.

Good morning. Not a lot blooming yet, but all the perennials are showing up. Swamp Rose Mallow, Prairie Blazing Star, Butterfly Milkweed, and Maypops, popping up everywhere. #nativeplants #gardening 🌱

White Vervain foliage rosette. It has emerald green lightly toothed leaves on gently curved stems. This is the parent plant returned from last year, but apparently they are short-lived perennials that don't always come back after flowering.

A gloved hand holding a clump of winter-sown White Vervain seedlings that were just unpotted from a soda bottle, showing the dense roots at the bottom.

A white Vervain seedling.

A picture of the flowers from last summer. They are very tiny white flowers held on long skinny flexible spikes that remind me of sparklers. This isn't a great picture--maybe I can do better this year. Oklahoma Northern Crosstimbers ecoregion 29a

I planted the seedlings of the White Vervain that volunteered in the garden last year. It's visited by lots of small pollinators and a host plant for the Common Buckeye and other butterflies and moths. Verbena urticifolia. #nativeplants #gardening 🌱

Me, too. I don't think it will take very long. I have at least 3 smaller plants as well.

It is just possible that I also have some that look like that in my hibiscus bed by the fence. I thought they were leggy black-eyed Susans, but that will be funny if they come up all over the place.

It gives me some hope for all the Leavenworth eryngo seeds I've spread out there.

I'm just surprised because I planted the seeds in 2024 but they never came up. That has happened with other seeds before, though.

Yeah, it almost looks like an aster now, except for that flower bud.

Yeah, it's so big it's been making me nervous. I hope I'm right.

The mystery plant on January 4, a large rosette of dark pointed leaves with pale veins.

The plant now has abundant lighter-colored leaves with white velvety hairs and looks something like an overgrown lettuce. When I tried looking this photo up on iNaturalist and Seek, I got Prickly Lettuce, Velvetweed, Chicory, and Evening Primrose was at the end of the list. Basketflower wasn't a suggestion.

Closeup of the flower bud. It hasn't formed the prickly-looking basket yet, but it looks like it's working up to it. Oklahoma Northern Crosstimbers ecoregion 29a.

This mystery plant came up in my garden over winter and my app said it was an Evening Primrose. But now I'm hoping it might be from the Basketflower seeds I tried to grow two years ago? (I may or may not have planted the seeds there.) #nativeplants #gardening 🌱 #plantID

Thanks. This one definitely didn't have a tracker but I expect to see a lot more.

I downloaded it, but I can't get it to open on my phone. Do you use it?

A Perfumeballs (Gaillardia suavis) plant with a dark-red ball-shaped flowers on tall bare stems coming from a profuse rosette of long toothy leaves. White Western Daisies are in the background.

A Monarch butterfly balances on the side of a Perfumeballs flower. It's not a great picture, but I like to post the first and last Monarchs that I see every year. Oklahoma Northern Crosstimbers ecoregion 29a.

Today the Perfumeballs were visited by the first Monarch I've seen this year. Gaillardia suavis is native in Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas. #nativeplants #gardening #butterflies 🌱

Closeup of a penstemon leaf and buds. The leaf is a waxy silver-green with wavy edges and is shaped like a little boat. The pinkish stem of the plant grows through the center of the boat like a mast, and the coral egg-shaped flower buds also grow from dainty stems that come from the base of the center stem. The leaves have fine white veins radiating from the center.

Another angle of the Penstemon murrayanus flower buds that shows the boat shape of the leaf a little better. The stems of this plant tend to nod at the top, then get stiffer, straighter and darker red as they get taller.

Scarlet Beardtongue aka Cupleaf Penstemon getting ready to bloom. Penstemon murrayanus. Native to a small area of Texas, Louisiana and southeastern Okahoma. #nativeplants #gardening 🌱

Patch, a blonde lab-mix dog, istanding in the grass next to petunias. He was a senior dog when he came to live with us almost four years ago, but he fit right in and everyone loved him right away.

Patch lying on the rug with Mia, a brown tabby cat, who is giving him the look of love. He is looking back at me, as if to say, "Make her stop staring at me." She stuck to him like glue.

Patch at the dog park with Frankie, our husky, and Mitzi, a little spotted hound in the wading pool. You guys never met Mitzi. She was in charge of the dogs and always got the pool to herself.

Patch and Ella, my other girl tabby cat, lying on the rug. Ella is looking at me and Patch looks like he's sleeping but maybe keeping an eye on Ella.

Rest in peace, Patch, we will miss you.

I'm sorry. Timing is the hardest thing about gardening with an illness--it won't wait for you to feel better.

Queen BUMBLEBEES - HELP THEM OUT!
A vital thread concerning bumblebee queens at this time of year!
Please #repost.
Likes are nice but #shares impact!
EVERY QUEEN BUMBLEBEE THAT SURVIVES GETS TO ESTABLISH A NEST which otherwise would not happen.
Let me explain.
1/11
#bees #love
#nature #bumblebees

Thank you 😊

They will one of these days. Some are more shy than others.

A large yellow butterfly with black tiger stripes sips nectar from a daisy, facing the camera with wings partly open and swept back. He is surrounded by green foliage and more daisies. Papilio glaucus and Astranthium ciliatum. Oklahoma Northern Crosstimbers ecoregion 29a.

An Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Western Daisies today in the garden. I've seen several fly by in the past few weeks, but he's the first to stay long enough for pictures. #gardening #nativeplants 🌱 #butterflies #lepidoptera

So if you can see them going into holes in the dirt under the shed, they aren't honeybees. Might not be possible to see that, though.

The nests would be in the soil and not the walls of your shed like with honeybees, as well.