Joe-pye-weed

Eupatorium fistulosum (also treated as Eutrochium fistulosum), the hollow Joe-Pye-weed or trumpetweed, is a tall, robust perennial herb of the Asteraceae native to eastern North America, where it grows in wet meadows, marsh edges, ditches, and damp thickets. It is among the most striking of the Joe-Pye-weeds, reaching two to three metres on stout, hollow, often purple-tinged or glaucous stems. The lance-shaped, toothed leaves are arranged in whorls of four to seven around the stem. In late summer and autumn the plant is crowned by large, domed, branching clusters of small mauve to pinkish-purple flower heads, each head containing only tubular disc florets and no rays; the massed inflorescence is softly fragrant and highly attractive to butterflies and other pollinators. The fruits are small achenes tipped with a bristly pappus for wind dispersal. A vigorous, clump-forming plant of consistently moist ground, it spreads by short rhizomes as well as by seed, forming bold stands in fens and along watercourses.