What makes the blooming of the aspera such a special time is the butterflies. When the gayfeathers bloom there are a few around maybe, but when the aspera blooms they're everywhere in the garden. They literally flock to the purple blooms, especially in the warm afternoon sun.
Even though I do so look forward to seeing this plant explode in blooms, scheduling and weather combined this year and I missed my opportunity to get all of the photos I wanted to. You can take a look at last year's photos, but this year you'll have to settle for a single video I took.
Every sunny afternoon during the peak of blooming the plant would be swarming with butterflies. I was never able to count exactly, but I estimate there were around 30 butterflies on the plant at once. Most of them were skippers: Silver-spotted skippers were quite prevalent, as were Fiery skippers and those that look pretty similar. There was at least one Buckeye here though.
Actually, I just remembered that I posted about some of these a couple of weeks ago. Here are a few select photos from that post:
In any case, the Liatris aspera has stopped blooming now. I really should remember to collect some seed this year and start a few more plants next year. I'm actually surprised I don't have volunteers of this one growing all around. The gayfeathers reseed readily, why don't these?
Maybe there's not enough bare soil in this bed -- it does have a lot of grasses taking up all of the space. Weeds still manage to find spots to grow in though. Hmmm...
I definitely need a few more of these plants in my yard. Just imagine the number of late-season butterflies I'd attract then!
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