Spotted Joe Pye Weed 'Carin'

All the big species of this genus have lovely, large flower heads which are very attractive to butterflies and other pollinators. I'd cal...Read Morel the flower color a dusty rose, definitely not fuchsia, red, or scarlet.

Unfortunately, the seed-heads tend to look messy rather than ornamental, and begin to detract from the flowering display within a week of the start of flowering. This is especially obvious with the white-flowered cultivars. If flower heads are cut back in August before they've entirely gone to seed, they may rebloom in September.

Foliage is deep green, sometimes with purplish tints, but definitely not black.

In the Chicago Botanic Garden's 2014 performance evaluation of Eupatoriums/Eutrochiums, this cultivar received five stars out of five, one of four of the 26 taxa in the trial to do so. This was largely due to its exceptional resistance to powdery mildew, which commonly disfigures the big species of this genus. [>HYPERLINK@www.chicagobotanic.org]

This cultivar generally gets taller than described, though still shorter than the species. In the Chicago trials, it reached 85" tall and 42" wide. It is a clump-former and does not spread aggressively, though it may need to be divided regularly where it encroaches on smaller border plants.

Though it can tolerate brief dryness once established, the big species of this genus are all moist-soil plants, and their leaves can get crispy without regular irrigation in my climate.

This is a cultivar of E. dubium, not E. maculatum. The species of this genus are commonly confused in commerce.

The 2 plants I bought labeled as Carin are exactly like the 2 that I dug up from the road in flower color. Carin was supposed to be silve...Read Morery pink although this entry says red or fuschia. The only difference in the Carin and species is that Carin is a foot shorter. Could just be a nursery error, but a disappointment.