Heliotrope in the Butterfly Garden

Our Flight Encounter recently received a mid-winter pick-me-up as we replaced the majority of the overgrown annuals from last summer and fall with new plants to carry us through the spring. Many of these cool-season annuals come with an extra benefit, aside from providing nectar for hungry butterflies - they also have wonderful fragrances. Flowers like heliotrope are filling the Encounter with sweet scents for guests to enjoy along with the butterflies.

Garden or Common Heliotrope (Heliotropium arborescens) is a perennial in its native range in Peru, but since it has some pretty specific growing requirements, most of us have to treat it as an annual. It dislikes both hot sun and freezing cold, so grow it in the cooler months or provide protection from direct sun in the Deep South. Learn more about growing Common Heliotrope here.

The sweet vanilla-like fragrance (which has led some to call it the Cherry Pie Plant) varies in intensity between cultivars. 'Fragrant Delight', as you might guess, has a strong sweet scent, while 'Iowa' is much more mild, and 'Dwarf Marine' has been bred for its intense blue color and has hardly any fragrance at all.

What's In a Name? The word "heliotropium" is Greek, meaning sun-turning. The tiny flowers of this plant turn toward the sun as it moves across the sky. The word "heliotropism" actually has a higher meaning in botany, describing any plant with this habit of turning toward the sun. "Arborescens" means tree-like, a reference to the fact that this perennial forms woody stems and can become quite tall in the proper growing conditions.