BUTTERWEEDS

 

Although butterweeds, or yellow tops, are reputed to show up in early spring, here in Louisiana during these last days of January, they’ve scheduled a brilliant yellow gold performance and have been showcasing their beauty for several weeks now.

 

Butterweeds are members of the aster family and strain to grow as tall as three feet. Although they’re show girls, they can be toxic if admirers are moved to pick and make a meal of them so it’s best that flower lovers just look at them growing on the flooded roadsides. Those who like to propagate flowers won’t find them at nurseries either, but serious flower growers can propagate them from seed, ripen, and sow immediately.

Butterweeds attract lots of pollinators, and one spring many years ago, my botanist friend Vickie Sullivan was inspired to write and publish a short poem about them in the Connecticut Fireside poetry journal. I can never view the sites of these flowers without thinking of the imagery Vickie created in this brief verse:

Butterweeds decorate ditches

in the springtime;

yellow dresses wave

in warm April sun

coyly hiding

sweet fragrant nectar,

anxious to give

some bee a tumble.

 

Photograph by Victoria Sullivan