← Wiki

Plant

Ironweed

Vernonia noveboracensis

Also known as: New York ironweed

A tall (4–7 ft) native perennial wildflower of moist meadows and wetland margins — distinguished by intense reddish-purple flat-topped flower clusters in late summer, lance-shaped leaves, and a tough fibrous stem (the source of the common name). Major late-season nectar source for native bees, butterflies, and migrating monarchs. Common in Staten Island's wet meadows.

Scientific

Vernonia noveboracensis is a 4–7 ft perennial composite-flower (Asteraceae) of moist meadows and wetland margins from [[barre-ma|Massachusetts]] to Florida. Intense reddish-purple flower clusters at the top of tall stems in late August through September. The fibrous tough stems give the genus its English name.

Top-tier native pollinator plant. Bumblebees, butterflies (especially swallowtails and monarchs), skippers, and small [[native-bees|native bees]] all use the nectar heavily. Combined with [[goldenrod|goldenrod]], Joe-Pye weed, and New England aster, ironweed forms the late-summer nectar foundation for the borough’s pollinator community.

On Staten Island

Common in the borough’s wet meadows and at wetland-margin sites. [[mount-loretto-unique-area|Mount Loretto]] grasslands, Greenbelt clearings near streams, ditches in the borough’s interior. Increasingly featured in native-plant pollinator-garden plantings.

See also

Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.

  • Substrate of: [[monarch-butterfly]]
  • Member of: [[plants]]
  • Contained by: [[staten-island]]

Sources

  • USDA NRCS Plants Database: New York ironweed
  • Xerces Society pollinator-plant references

Rooted in life.

What links here, and how

Inbound connections from across the wiki, grouped by lens and by relationship. These appear automatically — every entity page declares what it links to, and that data populates here on the targets.

Nothing yet. This entry is currently one node away from the rest of the graph — links will appear here automatically as the wiki grows. Each new entity that mentions this one in its relations frontmatter shows up here.

0 inbound links · 3 outbound