Vernonia noveboracensis Edible and the whole shrub stands

and the whole shrub stands upright and a little spare

describes the sprawling habit

over handsome gray-green

though centuries of cultivation have carried Lantana camara into warm gardens and roadsides around the globe until the plant is now genuinely pantropic

Vernonia noveboracensis Edible and the whole shrub standsIronweed earns the name twice over. The stems are stiff enough to stand through a hurricane season without staking, and the seedheads that follow the flowers rust to the exact color of weathered iron. But the reason to grow Vernonia noveboracensis is the purple: not the tidy lavender of garden asters but a saturated, almost fluorescent violet that arrives in late July and holds into October, riding five to eight feet up on strong green stems above a