Blazing Star (Liatris) is a native flower North America. It is a beautiful spiked flower with a stems originating from a corm or bulb underground. I’ve only seen it grow to about 3 ft, although I’ve heard it can grow up yo 5 ft. It grows in colonies and is a perennial, meaning the same plant blooms year after year. It is propagated by seed as well as the corm can sprout babies underground that mature in a few years.
There are dozens of species but the most common ones in Ohio are Dense Blazing Star (Liatris spicata) and Prairie Blazing Star (Liatris pynostachya) with a flower that is a spike made up of many small densely packed button shaped flowers arranged in around the stem. The bloom progresses from top to bottom and it blooms in summer around late July. Each flower on the stem produces a single fruit with many tiny seeds.
It is an open prairie wildflower found in full sun and we’ll drained soil. Other than Liatris spicata and Liatris pynostachya, I have seen other species in Ohio like the less dense Rough Blazing Star (Liatris aspera), which blooms in late August, and Cylindrical Blazing Star (Liatris cylindrica) in mid August, which has a branched spike with only a few flowers on it. All of the ones I’ve seen are the same light purple color, although I have seen an occasional single pure white spike surrounded by purple of the same species. I’m guessing that is just a mutation of the same species which doesn’t persist into future generations genetically unlike hybridization.
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Taxonomy
- Kingdom: Plantae
- Phylum: Tracheophytes
- Sub-Phylum: Angiosperms
- Class: Eudicots
- Order: Asterales
- Family: Asteraceae
- Subfamily: Asteroideae
- Tribe: Eupatoriea
- Sub-Tribe: Liatrinae
- Genus: Liatris
Good places to see this flower:
- Open prairies across North America mostly the eastern half.
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