Pass-Along Plants

LifeScapes 6

Lunaria. Image: Wikipedia

My news is all gardening at present, & supplies. I went to see an old lady at Windermere, & impudently took a large basket & trowel with me. She had the most untidy overgrown garden I ever saw. I got nice things in handfuls without any shame, amongst others a bundle of lavender slips . . . Mrs. Satterthwaite says stolen plants always grow, I stole some “honesty” yesterday, it was put to be burnt in a heap of garden refuse! I have had something out of nearly every garden in the village. —Beatrix Potter to Millie Warne, 1906

Miss Potter appreciated a bargain as well as the next gardener, but she’s having fun with words when she tells her friend Millie about stealing “honesty.” That’s one of the common names for a plant (Lunaria) that you may know as the silver dollar bush or the money plant or perhaps sixpence-in-your-pocket—names that describe the round, silvery seedpods that are so distinctive in dried arrangements. The Darling Dahlias chose it as the signature plant for their fifth book. And I always think of it as a pass-along plant, because my first seeds came from my mother’s Illinois garden, after she got some from a Missouri cousin on Grandma Franklin’s side of the family, who got hers from a friend in Davenport, Iowa. And so on. The money plant gets around.

I don’t have any Lunaria here at MeadowKnoll now. But one of our favorite pass-along plants is in bloom this week. We call it the Guild iris. It has a fascinating backstory.

Guild iris at MeadowKnoll, March 2024