Flower Garden Lovers

Grape Hyacinth as a Wildflower

To tell you the truth, we were reluctant to include this flower in our wildflower garden section and still aren't sure we should. While this flower, the common grape hyacinth, may be found growing wild especially back east, it is not a native to the US. Fact is, some places, Tennesee for instance, even consider it a pest and invasive species. It appears to be an escapee from the flower gardens of past days. However it does appear in some references as a wildflower, so here it is.

The GRAPE HYACINTH (Muscari botrycides), also known as Baby's Breath, because of its delicate faint fragrance, escapes from gardens at slight encouragement to grow wild in the roadsides and meadows from Massachusetts to Virginia and westward to Ohio. Its tiny, deep-blue, globular flowers, stiffly set around a fleshy scape that rises between erect, blade-like, channeled leaves, appear spring after spring wherever the small bulbs have been planted. On the east end of Long Island there are certain meadows literally blued with the little runaways.

As stated above this wildflower grows mainly back east. However it is not found in Florida, Georgia, nor South Carolina according to the USDA-NCRCS PLANTS database. It does grow out west in California, Utah and Oregon.

The common grape hyacinth likes the full sun but will apparently do well in partial shade under trees. As this wildflower dies back quickly after flowering, in May, you should plant it amongst other flowers that will provide interest at that point. Another good use of this flower would be in a rock garden as well in your wildflower garden.

USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database / Britton, N.L., and A. Brown. 1913. Illustrated flora of the northern states and Canada. Vol. 1: 510.

© 2005, Sandra Dinkins-Wilson

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