 |
Actaea racemosa |
 |
| | Cool new growth in late April |
| Synonym(s) |
Cimicifuga racemosa |
| Common name |
snakeroot; black cohosh |
| Family |
ranunculaceae |
| Life cycle |
perennial |
| Flowers |
white (early summer) |
| Size |
to 6' |
| Light |
part shade |
| Cultural notes |
ordinary garden soil |
What I like best about this plant is how little real estate it takes up in our cramped shade garden. But even as it rises from a narrow base, it makes a big impact, with tall, slender flowerstalks filled with fluffy white blooms.
At long last, I decided to catch up with taxonomists and rename this from Cimicifuga to Actaea. Maybe my brain will catch up at some point, too.
|
| | Neat pure-white buds |
|
We left this plant behind in our Pennsylvania garden (and wish it well); we don't grow it in Houston. About my plant portraits
PlantLinks to other web pages about Actaea racemosa
Visitors to this page have left the following comments| Hermine Dow | May 30, 2012 | This is a favorite of mine because it smells so sweet it perfumes the air. |
| B. Richards McIntyre | Jun 13, 2015 | This is a great plant and it is native to the part of Montana I reside in, which would be SW Montana. The Helena area. These grow like mad and get huge especially along creeks and other shady waterways. I often wonder if ours is a distinct species or if it is the same Actaea racemosa that grows elsewhere around the US. The smell of the flowers on our native, Spring blooming Snakeroot is very reminiscent of candy. They smell like the Pez candies I used to get at Woolworths as a kid. This is one plant I use a lot in my garden designs and I am never without a few of them in my own gardens. |
I welcome comments about my web pages; feel free to use the form below to
leave feedback about this particular page. For the benefit of other visitors
to these pages, I will list any relevant comments you leave, and if
appropriate, I will update my page to correct mis-information. Faced with an
ever-increasing onslaught of spam, I'm forced to discard any comments including
html markups. Please submit your comment as plain text. If you have a
comment about the website as a whole, please leave it in my
guestbook. If you
have a question that needs a personal response, please
e-mail me.
|
