Pye in the Eye

You gotta love the Joe-Pye Weed.

It's a shady character and a late bloomer. That is, it loves the shade and blooms in the late summer and early fall. 

Better yet, bees and butterflies love it. 

Once you hear the distinctive name, Joe-Pye Weed (Eupatorium purpureum) you'll never forget it.

We're told that Joe Pye was a Native American Indian herbalist who used the perennial to treat an outbreak of typhus among the colonists of Massachusetts Bay. The grateful colonists immortalized him by naming the plant for him.

Sometimes it's called "Queen of the Meadow." Sometimes it's called "gravel root." And sometimes "snakeroot."

No matter what you call this four-foot-high plant, the name that really sticks is "Joe-Pye Weed."

Insects can get Pye in their eye.