Virginia Native Plant Society

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Virginia Native Plant Society

Conserving wildflowers and wild places. To learn about Virginia's native plants, or to find a chapter, visit vnps.org
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The Virginia Native Plant Society, comprised of state board and local chapters, work with both public and private institutions and individuals to support their mission. Training, field trips, scholarships, native plants sales, restoration projects and a website contribute to the public outreach and plant preservation. The Society's members are experts, beginners, and everything in between, all sha

ring an interest in learning more Virginia's plant communities, and in working to preserve and enjoy them.

05/31/2026

The deep red of Fire-pink (Silene virginica) is breathtaking! Not only is it visually pleasing to humans, but also hummingbirds LOVE this plant. It’s not uncommon to see two or more chasing each other off while another sneaks in and enjoys the nectar.
Naturally, it occurs in dry forests, rocky woodlands, and along road banks in the Mountains and Piedmont of Virginia.
The word “pink” doesn’t refer to the color, but to the shape of the flowers. The ends of the petals are often notched like someone cut them with pinking shears!

📸 Ashley Moulton, VNPS publicity Chair

05/15/2026

Meet Virginia Sweetspire (Itea virginica). This lovely wetland shrub can be found flowering now across the Coastal Plain, and sometimes the extreme outer Piedmont. It tolerates a wide variety of wetland types, including stream banks, wet flatwoods, swamp forests, floodplain forests, and seepage swamps.

Virginia Sweetspire is loved by pollinators, and can make a great addition to a native plant garden. Dwarf cultivars are available and work well in small spaces with mesic soil, but the straight species is a great addition to any rain garden.

📸 Maeve Coker, VNPS Education Chair

05/09/2026

In April, the Natural Areas Science Manager, Dr. Ryan Klopf, and Dr. Rachel Reid, a Research Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech, were awarded a grant from the Virginia Native Plant Society to study the history of fire and vegetation within Buffalo Mountain NAP. Specifically, Drs. Klopf and Reid will collect soil cores from within and near Southern Blue Ridge Low-Elevation Mafic Barrens (G1/S1) to measure soil organic matter carbon isotopes and charcoal. Carbon isotopes (δ13C) can be used as a proxy to illustrate the relative dominance of warm season grasses versus trees or shrubs across millennia, while macroscopic charcoal accumulation rates will tell us more about the fire history of Buffalo Mountain. This project will elucidate the historic ecology of grasslands and adjacent woodlands within Buffalo Mountain NAP, and further help inform restoration and stewardship of natural heritage resources within the preserve.

05/07/2026

We've shown you Pink Lady's Slippers, but have you ever seen Large Yellow Lady's Slippers (Cypripedium parviflorum)? Maybe you've heard of them referred to a Whip-poor-will Shoes!

In the mountains and piedmont, this orchid species favors mesic forests but can be found in dry woodlands, as long as the soil is rich. In the coastal plain, this species is rare and restricted to adjacent slopes and hummocks of seepage swamps that lie on ancient shell deposits.

How many of Virginia's 60+ orchid species will you spot this year?

📸 Maeve Coker, VNPS Education Chair

05/01/2026

Blooming now in the mountains of Virginia! Striped Maple (Acer pensylvanicum) puts on an unsuspecting show with its yellowish-green flowers, which can easily be overlooked as they blend into the foliage. Striped bark gives this tree its name, although sometimes it is referred to as Goosefoot Maple due to the resemblance of its leaves to the feet of geese.

Typically this species can be found at over 2000 feet elevation, and while it isn't restricted to acidic soils, it is most commonly found where they are infertile. It is also quite abundant as an understory tree or shrub in mixed oak and oak-hickory forests.

📸 Maeve Coker, VNPS Education Chair

04/29/2026

Kalmia latifolia, mountain laurel, is blooming now. Mountain laurel has become more abundant over the last century, as overstory chestnuts have fallen to blight and oaks have been defoliated by gypsy moths. Highly tolerant of dry sites. Good for rehabilitating disturbed or eroded sites. It also recovers well after fire; and of course lovely flowers in spring. The anthers of the flower are spring-loaded - positioned under tension and laid back against the petals; when a bee lands on the flower, they are thrown forward and release their pollen. This evergreen ericaceous shrub is found in mesic to dry, acidic forests, woodlands, and shrub balds; often in sandy, rocky, or organic-rich soils; less typically in bogs and seepage wetlands. More or less common throughout, except in the outer and far se.
Coastal Plain, where infrequent.

📸 Ashley Moulton, VNPS Publicity Chair

04/27/2026

Tiny, but mighty beautiful! Spergularia marina, or Saltmarsh Sand Spurry, is beginning to bloom in the outer Coastal Plain. With flowers not quite the size of dimes, and barely reaching several inches in height, this plant still packs a punch when it blooms en masse. This lovely native plant is right at home in maritime beaches, salt pannes, and overwash flats.
Its love for salt has found this plant introduced well outside its range in inland states where road salt is used heavily on highways!

📸 Anne Parker, Northern Neck Chapter VNPS

04/24/2026

The lovely Pinxterbloom Azaleas (Rhododendron periclymenoides) are blooming along our roadsides, stream-sides and on forested slopes around Richmond, Va. Found from New York to Georgia, these graceful deciduous shrubs flaunt eye-catching clusters of tubular rosy pink flowers at the tips of their branches.
If you stop and take a closer look, you can often smell their light spicy fragrance. Our native azaleas host at least 50 species of native caterpillars, including Hairstreaks and Brown Elfins. These shrubs are easy to grow in moist but well drained acidic soils. Planting them with at least a half day of sun will help keep them compact and encourage profuse blooms. Pinxterblooms are relatively slow growing but are very adaptable to heat, drought, soil compaction and a range of drainage conditions. They are especially effective planted along woodland edges or in riparian areas along streamside slopes where their fibrous roots and suckering habit helps prevent erosion.

📸 Ashley Moulton, VNPS Publicity Chair

04/22/2026

“Pink lady’s slipper (Cypripedium acaule) is found throughout Virginia. The pink lady’s slipper is found in mature pine woodlands and is extremely hard to relocate.
Plants are only mature or healthy enough to bloom if they produce a pair of leaves. They are pollinated by bees.
According to USDA: In order to survive and reproduce, pink lady’s slipper interacts with a fungus in the soil from the Rhizoctonia genus. Generally, orchid seeds do not have food supplies inside them like most other kinds of seeds. Pink lady’s slipper seeds require threads of the fungus to break open the seed and attach them to it. The fungus will pass on food and nutrients to the pink lady’s slipper seed. When the lady’s slipper plant is older and producing most of its own nutrients, the fungus will extract nutrients from the orchid roots. This mutually beneficial relationship between the orchid and the fungus is known as “symbiosis” and is typical of almost all orchid species.” -

📸 Ashley Moulton, VNPS Publicity Chair during a annual monitoring site visit for Capital Region Land Conservancy in Hanover County, Virginia.

04/18/2026

Almost ethereal in appearance and fragrance, our native Fringe Tree (Chionanthus virginicus) is beginning to bloom across the state. It can be found in a wide range of habitats, from dry and mesic upland forests and woodlands, to a various wetlands and bottomland forests.

The delicate flowers are dioecious, meaning every plant has either male or female flowers. The fruit are sought-after by wildlife when they mature in the fall. What's not to love about Fringe Tree? Consider adding one to your yard if you have space for a tree!

Want to know more? Check out the Wildflower of the Year article for 1997: https://vnps.org/wildflowers-of-the-year-2/1997-fringe-tree-chionanthus-virginicus/ .Nearly 30 years later we are still celebrating this small tree!

📸 Maeve Coker, VNPS Education Chair

Address

400 Blandy Farm Lane, Unit 2
Boyce, VA
22620

Telephone

540-837-1600

Website

http://VNPS.org/

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