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Nine books on wildflowers piled on my desk have not given me a satisfying answer to a question: Who was Joe Pye? The most I could find was: the plant is . . . named for a New England Indian who used the plant in some concoction for the cure of fevers.”
Joe Pye Weed, with it’s big domed heads of pinkish rose flowers, now rules the roadsides of the upper Virginia Piedmont. It can grow to a height of seven feet and, according to several sources, has the odor of vanilla when crushed. I have been too busy admiring Joe Pye Weed to test it for the smell of vanilla.
Butterflies find this lovely plant to their liking and yellow Swallowtails cluster around its flower heads. For those who wish to attract butterflies to the home garden, Joe Pye Weed is now available from suppliers specializing in native wild flowers.
Joe Pye Weed is a native but Chicory, which scatters its blue flowers along grassy roadsides, is not. Chicory is a native to Europe and came over with the first settlers. Perhaps early settlers brought it to remind them of the settled and safe world they left behind. There was not much room for personal baggage on those sailing ships. It is just possible that Chicory, like many other nonnative plants, came accidentally in the ballast of the great sailing ships. Stones were used to keep the ships low in the water on the voyage to the New World. No doubt soil containing seeds was also shoveled into the holds of those sailing vessels. On the return to England, the ships would be loaded with lumber, tobacco, tar, and sas
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