Vernonia, the Weed You Need

By Jill Chase

It’s sad that some of the best garden plants go unknown just because of bad PR. Purely on name alone, how can baneberry, snakeroot or ragwort compete with the angelic sounding meadowsweet, Queen Anne’s lace or foxglove? Some of the best plants have the word “weed” built in. Joe Pye weed, milkweed and sneezeweed come to mind. Although “weed” usually has a negative connotation, one could think of it as being a little clue that under the right conditions it’s easy to grow, and that’s not a bad thing. Ironweed, also known as vernonia, is one of those plants.

The vernonia family of plants like a sunny moist spot and under these conditions they ask for very little from you. Purple flowers on tall stalks bloom for weeks on end in late summer. The Garden Club of America has chosen vernonia lettermannii as their 2026 Plant of the Year. This is a very garden-worthy plant, but I would recommend vernonia noveboracensis, New York ironweed, which is native to Litchfield County. Growing on strong seven-foot-tall stems, it is fabulous in swaths in a damp meadow as well as making a statement in the back of a border.

Vernonia noveboracensis can be seen blooming in City Meadow in August and September near the pond. If you walk through veronia when they are in bloom you will be surrounded by the happy buzzing of native bees. Vernonia is a host plant to American painted lady butterflies and is a valuable late-season food source for monarchs, swallowtails and skippers. Leave the stalks up at the end of the season so the seed heads can feed the birds. If you want to invite nature into your garden, vernonia is a great choice.

This beautiful, tough-as-nails plant will just get better year after year, but won’t aggressively spread. If this is a weed then let me have weeds!