As a passionate gardener, I’m always on the lookout for new plants to add visual interest and biodiversity to my outdoor space. Lately, I’ve become enamored with Arizona Beggarticks (Bidens ferulifolia) – a hardy wildflower native to the Southwest United States. With its vibrant yellow blooms and fern-like foliage, Arizona Beggarticks brings beauty while also attracting pollinators and benefiting the garden ecosystem.
In this article, I’ll explore the numerous advantages of incorporating Arizona Beggarticks into your garden design and care routine. Read on to learn why this unassuming wildflower should have a spot front and center in your blossoming oasis.
An Explosion of Color
One of the Arizona Beggarticks’ most noticeable attributes is the profusion of bright golden-yellow blooms it produces from early summer well into fall. The flowers have delicate, slender yellow petals surrounding a brown central cone. When massed together, they create a vibrant pop of color.
The cheery blossoms contrast beautifully with the fine, lacy green foliage. This makes Arizona Beggarticks a great companion for pink, blue, white or red flowering plants. The yellow flowers will make other colors seem to glow even brighter.
Easy Care
Arizona Beggarticks thrives with minimal care, making it an excellent choice for beginner and busy gardeners. It grows rapidly to form a bushy mound shape about 12-18 inches tall and 18-24 inches wide.
All it requires is full sun exposure and average soil drainage Once established, Arizona Beggarticks is drought-resistant and can tolerate dry spells without wilting It’s also not overly demanding when it comes to soil nutrients. Just remember to water occasionally during hot, rain-free periods.
The fast growth habit and self-seeding tendency does mean you’ll need to prune Arizona Beggarticks back every few weeks. This prevents leggy stems and encourages bushier regrowth. However, less maintenance is required than many other flowering perennials and annuals.
Long Flowering Season
Many gardeners appreciate Arizona Beggarticks for the sheer duration of its blooming period. In warm regions, the cheery yellow flowers last from early summer through late fall, often with year-round flowering.
Even through periods of extreme heat, Arizona Beggarticks perseveres where other flowers wilt and fade. Deadheading spent blooms encourages new flowering. So with simple maintenance, you can enjoy 3 seasons of vibrant color in your garden.
The long bloom period also provides crucial late-season nectar for pollinators before winter dormancy. Planting Arizona Beggarticks means your landscape remains alive with activity into the autumn months.
Attracts Pollinators
A standout benefit of Arizona Beggarticks is the draw it has for a diversity of essential pollinators. Bees, butterflies, and other beneficial insects are highly attracted to the nectar-rich yellow blooms.
Incorporating this wildflower into your garden encourages ecological biodiversity beyond just visual appeal. It brings life and activity to your landscape by supporting local pollinator populations.
By filling seasonal nectar gaps with the Arizona Beggarticks’ extended flowering, you’ll increase visits from threatened native bees. A small action that collectively makes a big conservation impact.
Unfussy Growth Habit
The unfussy, carefree growth habit of Arizona Beggarticks makes it a great fit for spaces where other flowers struggle. Its versatility and adaptability mean you can utilize it in flower beds, borders, hanging baskets, creeping over walls, in rock gardens, and cascading from containers.
Arizona Beggarticks tolerates poor, rocky soils and REFLECTS high heat and drought conditions. It can be planted in full sun areas where shade-loving flowers would wither and wilt.
Thanks to the vining, trailing stems, Arizona Beggarticks also works well in mixed containers. Allow it to spill over pot edges alongside heat-tolerant companions like verbena, million bells, and trailng lobelia.
Self-Sows Easily
The prolific seed production means Arizona Beggarticks self-sows freely under ideal conditions. As the blooms fade, small forked seed pods develop, splitting open when ripe. Seeds drop around the parent plant, leading to natural reseeding and new seedlings popping up each year.
For gardeners, this reduces the need to replant annually. It also allows you to propagate Arizona Beggarticks at no cost by allowing some seed pods to develop undisturbed. Just be sure to prune old growth regularly so self-sown plants don’t take over.
Deer Resistant
Gardeners plagued by deer and rabbits appreciate that Arizona Beggarticks is ignored by these hungry animals. The lacy foliage contains naturally bitter compounds that make it unpalatable to herbivores.
By adding this tough, resilient wildflower to vulnerable areas, you create visual interest that holds up to nibbling invaders. Arizona Beggarticks can act as an attractive barrier and buffer protecting more susceptible plants.
Thrives in Poor Soils
Arizona Beggarticks is well adapted to lean, nutrient-deficient soils. In fact, rich soil often causes lanky, floppy growth. This makes it a good choice for soil remediation and reestablishing vegetation in problematic areas.
The sturdy taproot draws up subsoil nutrients and helps break up compressed soils. As Arizona Beggarticks self sows, the plant litter also improves topsoil conditions for other vegetation.
Areas with poor fertility, contaminated or compacted soil benefit from the tenacious growth and soil enriching properties of this wildflower. It performs well where other plants struggle or fail to establish.
Versatile Garden Uses
There are so many ways to utilize Arizona Beggarticks’ vibrant beauty and resilient nature within your landscape. Here are some of my favorite garden uses for this tough yet delicate-looking wildflower:
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Mass as a ground cover in vacant lots, meadows, and open areas to improve soil while creating seasonal color.
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Underplant in ornamental grass stands to add contrasting fine texture and pops of bright blooms.
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Allow to creep over stone retaining walls and cascade down slopes or embankments for elegant drapes of color.
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Plant in rock gardens, xeriscapes, or Mediterranean gardens that emulate its native growing conditions.
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Mix into informal cottage garden style plantings and wildflower meadows.
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Feature in pollinator and butterfly habitat gardens to attract essential insects.
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Use in roadside plantings, bioswales, highway slopes, and drainage ditches where resilience is required.
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Add to cutting flower gardens for fresh-picked bouquets. The blooms and ferny foliage add delicate texture.
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Plant in pots and hanging baskets on balconies, patios, and entryways for cascades of color.
Low Maintenance Requirements
To grow Arizona Beggarticks successfully, very minimal care and maintenance is required once plants are established. Here’s a quick summary of its easygoing needs:
- Full sun exposure
- Average well-draining garden soil
- Moderate soil fertility; avoid rich soil
- Occasional watering during drought
- Prune spent blooms to encourage reblooming
- Cut back leggy growth as needed
- Allow some seed pods to self sow each year
If you can provide these simple basics, Arizona Beggarticks will reward you with countless benefits while asking very little in return. It’s the ultimate low maintenance plant!
The Perfect Pollinator Magnet
Here in my own garden, I’ve been amazed by Arizona Beggarticks’ power to attract diverse pollinators. On hot summer days, the air is abuzz with activity around its cheery blooms.
It draws in both familiar species like honeybees and bumblebees, and more threatened native bees I’ve never noticed before. Small butterflies like skippers and hairstreaks flutter delicately from flower to flower. I’ve even noticed hummingbirds occasionally visiting.
By propagating plenty of Arizona Beggarticks each season, I feel like I’m directly contributing to conservation efforts for essential pollinators. A rewarding feeling for any gardener!
A Tough Yet Delicate Beauty
Rugged yet delicate, bold yet refined – Arizona Beggarticks encompasses contradictory qualities that make it endlessly intriguing. This wildflower has truly won me over with its vivid beauty, rugged resilience, and ecological benefits.
If you have a vacant spot begging for color or want to make your garden more pollinator friendly, look no further than the Arizona Beggarticks. Let this Southwestern native infuse your landscape with vibrant, yet fragile-looking blossoms.
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FAQ
What are beggarticks good for?
Are beggar ticks edible?
How to eat beggarticks?
Are beggarticks annual or perennial?
Are Apache beggarticks perennials?
Apache Beggarticks, Fern-Leaved Beggarticks, Coreopsis ferulifolia, Bidens procera Long-blooming and carefree, Bidens ferulifolia (Apache Beggarticks) is a vigorous low-growing evergreen perennial, often grown as an annual, boasting a profusion of delicately fragrant, bright yellow daisies, up to 2 in. across (5 cm).
Where do beggarticks grow?
Common Names: Arizona Beggarticks, Apache Beggarticks, Bur Marigold Habitat: Riparian. This wildflower can be found growing in sunny locations in moist soil along streams, seeps, and rivers in the deserts and uplands. Because of its showy flowers, it is also cultivated as an ornamental garden plant. Flower Color: Golden yellow.
Which beggarticks have yellow flowers?
Bidens aurea: Also known as tickseed beggarticks, this species has golden-yellow flowers and finely cut leaves. It’s a North American native that attracts pollinators to the garden. 6. Bidens laevis: Smooth beggarticks, as it’s commonly called, has yellow flowers and smooth, lance-shaped leaves.
Are beggarticks edible?
Its young leaves and flowers are edible. Beggarticks blooms are comprised of five to eight white ray florets surrounding many yellow tubular disk florets. Leaves begin simple and oppositely arranged. As they mature, they become compound with lobed leaflets that have hairy undersides and toothed margins .