Why do they call it Clitoria?

A couple of years ago a potted vine came in to Fern Valley from a nursery that produces plants from seed collected from native plants in the state of Maryland. It was a nice perennial in the pea family and when it flowered, the blooms looked a lot like this but they were subtly different. The label read: "Centrosema virginiana or Clitoria mariana"; they weren't certain of the identification. Well, when it flowered, Joan and Alan (USNA botanist) looked at it and concluded, to my great relief, that it was Centrosema.

All was well except that I am having a difficult time finding a site that suitably displays it, provides good growing conditions, and in which it won't be overrun by more vigorous elements. Anyway all was well until last week when we found abundant examples of Clitoria in Bibb County Alabama. We collected a good amount of seed and will doubtless be able to produce nice plants in the next year or two. Maybe we can label it so well that no one will ask me its name, but its a beauriful plant and....I see questions in the future so I'm going to go with the concensus "Atlantic Pigeonwings", which also seems like it works visually.

PS I am not the kind of guy who will bury you in links and flack every cool website I see, but there's just something about this one: Memorial Ecosystems

Grass-leafed golden aster, Narrow-leafed Silkgrass: I never heard it called any of those names

Sometimes you just like a plant; I like Pityopsis. I like it a lot. It has virtues, it's tough and blooms late in the season. The silvery-green foliage is reason enough to grow it. Reseeding dependably but not intrusively, it is native to the Coastal Plain from Maryland through Florida and along the Gulf Coast to Texas.

Actually, not limited to the coastal plain, it climbs into the mountains. We saw it on sunny roadsides in North Carolina on the Shortia trip. Even in the Okefenokee Swamp it grows around the elevated bases of Longleaf Pines. You see it everywhere in its range where there is dry soil and sun.

In the garden it is a good companion for what I call the "hard" herbs, the ones that like heat and drought and relatively infertile soil; rosemary, sage, thyme, germander, and their ilk are complemented by the silver vertical foliage. Yes, the flowers are a brassy yellow gold but they don't look like dandelions, actually they look like hawkweeds, another of my favorite plants. The essence of this plant though has nothing to do with flowers. The silky silver of the linear leaves creates a unique texture that add something special to any xeric sunny planting. But still, I seem to value it as more than the sum of its virtues. Sometimes you just like a plant.