Blazing Star Liatris

Blazing Star Liatris looks like someone took a bottle rocket, painted it purple, and planted it in the garden. These dramatic flower spikes shoot straight up from grass-like foliage, creating vertical exclamation points that practically shout "look at me!" from across the yard.

What makes Liatris truly special is its reverse flowering habit – while most plants start blooming from the bottom and work their way up, Blazing Star does the exact opposite, opening from the top down. It's like watching a purple fuzzy caterpillar slowly wake up, segment by segment. This unique quirk means the show lasts for weeks as the blooms progress down the spike.

But the real magic happens when the butterflies discover your Liatris patch. These purple towers are like butterfly magnets, attracting monarchs, painted ladies, and every other winged visitor in the neighborhood. During peak bloom, a single plant can look like it's hosting its own butterfly convention – it's nature's version of a block party.

Blazing Star is also ridiculously tough once established. It laughs at drought, ignores poor soil, and comes back stronger every year from its underground corms. Native to North American prairies, this plant knows how to handle whatever weather throws at it. You'll see these purple rockets adding vertical drama and butterfly appeal to our median plantings, proving that sometimes the most dramatic plants are also the most reliable.