{"id":7034,"date":"2020-04-21T04:35:33","date_gmt":"2020-04-21T04:35:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenescapades.com\/blog\/?p=7034"},"modified":"2020-04-21T04:38:26","modified_gmt":"2020-04-21T04:38:26","slug":"plant-a-day-2020-day-103-scutellaria-altissima","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gardenescapades.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/21\/plant-a-day-2020-day-103-scutellaria-altissima\/","title":{"rendered":"Plant-A-Day 2020 (Day 103) Scutellaria altissima"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

My favorite garden writer, Christopher Lloyd, called aggressive plants \u201cthugs.\u201d Scutellaria altissima forces me to come up with a stronger term! I purchased seeds of this plant from Pinetree Garden Seeds around 1996 under the name Dracocephalum moldavica. It wasn\u2019t until TODAY (4.20.20) that I actually discovered online what the actual identity of this plant is\u2013the Tall Skullcap, Scutellaria altissima! It appears to be a native plant in the Northeast. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The seeds grew well and I planted a bunch of seedlings along the driveway and they performed well. They get a burst of fresh mint-like foliage in the spring and then cute wands of bluish tiny skullcaps in May. Bees love them. Unfortunately, they are aggressive spreaders. My new term for these invasive types is maleficent marauders. <\/em><\/strong> Before long, these maleficent marauders were springing up all over the driveway bed, and in some cracks in the driveway itself. They didn\u2019t seem to be spreading beyond that, so I wasn\u2019t as concerned about them becoming an environmental disaster. However, this last weekend, I walked past the neighbor\u2019s house and noticed that she has a bunch of these plants coming up in a flower bed that is a long way from my driveway bed! Yikes! Time to do some eradicating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n