Species Name:  Scrophularia marilandica

Common Name: Late Figwort, Eastern Figwort

Zone: 4 to 8

Light: Full Sun, Light Shade, Full shade

Soil Moisture: Mesic to Medium to Medium dry, well drained

Soil Types: Sand, Loam, Clay

Fertility: Medium to Rich

pH: 5 to 6.8

Bloom Time: late July, August into September

Habit: Late figwort is a super pollinator plant. The flowers have a high nectar content attracting a wide variety of insects, bees, butterflies, moths, and wasps as well as being a hummingbird magnet. The tiny red and green flowers are small and unremarkable but make up for their lack of color by their prolific numbers and rich nectar. The flowers develop into small tear shaped capsules filled with numerous small black seeds. The seeds are relatively easy to germinate and will take 2 to 3 years to produce a flowering plant. The seed can also be collected and used to naturalize the plant in the wild.

Figwort is a large plant reaching up to 6ft in height and 3 to 4 ft wide with hefty stems and dense foliage and its hollow, square stalks make excellent nesting cavities for overwintering insects. The plant will grow in full sun to nearly full shade in moist to medium dry soils. It prefers rich deep soils but is adaptable to many other conditions. The plant is hardy and long lived.

It may not be everyone’s top specimen plant but it should be used to attract and support pollinators in the garden and especially encouraged to naturalize in wild landscapes

It has a wide geographic range growing from southern Canada, throughout the northeast , the mid-Atlantic states and extending west to the plains states. It naturally is found growing in floodplains , riverbank thickets, open woods, in clearings, forest margins and roadsides.

Figwort is highly deer resistant. The plant contains several toxic compounds that make it unpalatable to deer, a desirable trait for a very desirable pollinator friendly native plant and it should be widely planted.

The tiny flowers of Late Figwort.

Foliage of Late Figwort.