Native Plants

Q. Who is Mr. Smarty Plants?

A: There are those who suspect Wildflower Center volunteers are the culpable and capable culprits. Yet, others think staff members play some, albeit small, role. You can torture us with your plant questions, but we will never reveal the Green Guru's secret identity.

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Ask Mr. Smarty Plants

Ask Mr. Smarty Plants is a free service provided by the staff and volunteers at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.

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Please forgive us, but Mr. Smarty Plants has been overwhelmed by a flood of mail and must take a break for awhile to catch up. We hope to be accepting new questions again soon. Thank you!

Need help with plant identification, visit the plant identification page.

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Sunday - July 19, 2009

From: Springfield, MA
Region: Northeast
Topic: Plant Identification, Herbs/Forbs
Title: Plant identification from Springfield MA
Answered by: Barbara Medford

QUESTION:

We have a house next to us that is vacant. The lawn has not been mowed in months. a tall flower has grown amongst the grass and weeds. It is about 3 to 4 feet tall green stem and the flower is about 2 inch diameter round purple fuzzy flower or maybe it is a weed we are curious what this may be?

ANSWER:

No matter how good the description, we cannot identify a plant without a picture. Your description could be any one of hundreds of flowers and it might even be non-native, which would mean we didn't even have it in our Native Plant Database. Go to the Mr. Smarty Plants Plant Identification page and follow the instructions for submitting a photo, and sending as much more information as possible, and we'll try to figure out what it is.

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