Saturday is the last day of Greenhouse Days! The greenhouse will be open on April 29 from 10 am - 2 pm, where you may shop for native plants from Ruffner Mountain and Turkey Creek Nature Preserve.
The feature plant this week is bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora). A thicket-forming shrub, bottlebrush buckeye has large, palmately-compound leaves, and the shrub profusely blooms in early summer with long spikes of white feathery flowers. Bottlebrush buckeyes are perfect for a shady woodland border.
The nectar-rich blossoms of bottlebrush buckeyes attract many species of butterflies, and one of our favorites to watch is the pipevine swallowtail (Battus philenor). With a constant flutter of the wings, the butterfly uncoils its proboscis (an elongated sucking mouthpart that works like a straw) to probe and sip nectar from each flower.
