Anchorage Daily News

We spend so much time going after the latest and greatest that the nursery industry has developed that we often lose sight of some of the great native flowering plants. Many of these are in bloom right now, and with the end of the annual buying season, most nurseries concentrate on perennials, including these natives.

Obviously there are some advantages to growing native plants in your gardens, but none is greater than the fact that these have been field-tested for years and are guaranteed to be stone-hardy, able to survive anything our Alaska weather can throw at them.

One of my favorites is the so-called "shooting star," or Dodecatheon. This is a little plant, no more than 6 inches or so when in bloom as a result of a stalk that holds the pointed flowers, which look like the tips of space crafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere.

This is because the petals are pink, but there is a white ring near the stamen giving the flower the look of motion. These flowers have a little-known but quite pleasant fragrance.

Plants appear early in the garden and bloom in mid- to late June with some as late is mid- to late July, after which the leaves gradually disappears. Not to worry -- the beginnings of next year's plants are just under the surface. They normally grow in alpine meadows, which are usually pretty damp, so give them similar conditions and yours will thrive.

You can divide clumps of Dodecatheon, which is the easiest way to propagate this lovely native. Or you can collect seeds in late July or August and plant them, outdoors. It will take about a month to germinate the seeds and three or four years before seed-grown plants will produce flowers.

Next, if you really have to have forget-me-nots, then by all means try the native variety, Myosostis alpestris. This is not the same as the annual flowering forget-me-not that way too many have allowed to get into their yards.

The latter are self-seeding annuals and can take over a garden after just one season. The former is the Alaska state flower and a biennial so plants grow for two years and produce flowers only in the second year. It can be controlled. You have a whole season to pull out seedlings before they flower and spread seed the next.

You can start M. alpestris from seed with no trouble at all. They prefer a bit of shade and good, rich compost or humus.

Gardeners in the Lower 48 are discovering that there is, as I have been harping about for years, a difference between geraniums and pelargoniums. Pelargoniums are the plants you used to call geraniums with the big red, white and pink flowers.

True geraniums, such as our native blue flowering Geranium erianthum, are all the rage Outside. Here it is treated as an unappreciated weed. Plants are actually quite lovely and easy to find and transplant. Look for the smaller plants with red-edged leaves around existing ones.

There are two native Jacob's ladder, Polemonium acutiflorum (the tall one that grows to 2 feet) and Polemonium pulcherrimum (which only gets a few inches tall). Both are easy to grow from seed collected in August and produce blue flowers.

Another blue flower -- many of our natives are blue flowering plants -- is Campanula rotundifolia, or Bluebells of Scotland. These have 1 1/4-inch bell or bonnet-shaped flowers on plants that grow to about a foot. They spread by rhizomes, but you can collect seed after they finish blooming. This is a great rock garden plant.

Next, if you are lucky, you may be able to find a chocolate lily (Fritillaria camschatcensis). This native develops flowers right about now. They are propagated from corms that grow off the mother bulb and do best in moist soil and given full sun.

If you are looking for a native shrub, then Aruncus sylvester is for you. In fact, you can plant several and make a large, 5-foot-tall informal hedge. One warning: the plants die back to the ground, which means you won't have a hedge during the winter months.

You've seen Aruncus, aka "goatsbeard," and will recognize its white flowers and familiar leaf. You can propagate from seed, but it takes three or four years for the plants to get to a decent size in the season. It spreads by itself, however, and you can take new plants from the mother.

Finally, if you are looking for a ground cover for that woodland garden, consider our native Bunchberry, Cornus canadensis.

This low-growing plant forms patches of green leaves on top of which it produces green flowers that are surrounded by four white bracts (as in the red of poinsettias). Later, these flowers produce red berries giving this ground cover the ability to hold interest for quite some time.

There are many other natives. Most are for sale locally, so don't think about collecting them from the wild. If you must, limit yourself to seeds unless you have permission from the land owner on whose property you may happen to find a tempting plant.

Jeff Lowenfels is a member of the Garden Writers Hall of Fame. You can reach him at gardenerjeff.googlepages.com or by joining the "Garden Party" radio show from 10 a.m. to noon Saturdays on KBYR 700 AM.

Gardening calendar

• LAWNS: Mow a pattern into yours. Why be dull. Leave your clippings; do not bag except to collect clippings for mulching annuals or for use in the compost pile.

• PEONIES: Stake yours now if you haven't all ready; tomato cages are great.

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