Lessons From The Garden
Miss the Daffadils? Meet Joe Pye By Hilary Godin
After we retired and became year-round residents on the Cape, my husband, David, and I had the pleasure of experiencing, for the first time, the drifts of daffodils blooming in spring in St. Mary's gardens. The meadow then transformed later in the summer by the towering pink domes of Joe Pye Weed providing a pollinators’ feast. Actually, Joe Pye can be found throughout all areas of the garden at this time of year. Joe Pye Weed ( Eupatorium aka boneset) is considered one of the most beneficial native perennials in the eastern United States. Blooming in late summer, its mauve-pink flower clusters attract a variety of pollinators. Its nectar provides an important food source at a time when many other flowers have finished blooming. How did it get the name Joe Pye? According to the Hitchcock Center for the Environment in Massachusetts, Joseph Shauquethqueat was a prominent Mohican leader and healer who lived in Stockbridge.
He is widely regarded as the historical namesake of the native wildflower Joe Pye Weed. Because Native people living in communities alongside European settlers often adopted English names or aliases for trade and official business, he became
known to settlers as "Joe Pye." But why is it called a "weed"?
From my research, I learned that early European settlers often used the word weed to describe unfamiliar native plants that grew vigorously in the wild. The term didn't necessarily imply that the plant was undesirable or troublesome—only that it was a wild species outside the cultivated crops and garden plants they were accustomed to growing.
Right: Joe Pye Weed grows in all areas of St. Mary’s garden at this time of year.
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