An autumn burst of scarlet
By Catherine Bollinger
Now is the time for stalks of the cardinal flower to burst with color.
Nothing lights up the landscape on a cold January day like a few male cardinals perched on a snowy branch. Their fiery feathers add sharp visual contrast to an otherwise black and white world.
The deep scarlet of cardinal flowers (Lobelia cardinalis) in an early fall landscape provide a similar effect. In a slightly faded green world, the 3- to 5-foot-tall stalk, full of ruby-lipped flowers, provides the eye a welcome place to settle.
This beauty, native to our floodplains and swamps, adapts well to more formal garden settings. For most of the year, a low basal rosette of leaves waits patiently.
As long as you don't bury the leaves in mulch or let the soil go completely dry, flower stalks will shoot up in midsummer. A few flowers open in early August, but in my yard they set the landscape on fire from late August through most of September.
Hummingbirds, always seduced by tubular red flowers, are the primary pollinators. I have also observed swallowtail butterflies delicately inserting their long tongues for the nectar.
New plants form a clump around the original rosette and are easy to pull apart and replant when seed capsules replace flowers. After I relocate the new rosettes, I carry the seed stalks down to my floodplain, shaking them vigorously to release the seeds.
If I'm lucky, next year scarlet spikes will glow among the jewelweeds and goldenrods that also light my autumn wetland.