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Native Plant Society of Texas

Clear Lake Chapter

Plant of the Month: Seaside Goldenrod

Presented by Wendy Reistle
September 14, 2020

Botanical name: Solidago sempervirens
Common names: Seaside Goldenrod
Family: Asteraceae (Gentian)

[MUS—EASY AND FUN]

[WENDY] Hi! This is Wendy Reistle and our plant of the month is Solidago sempervirens or Seaside Goldenrod.

Seaside Goldenrod is a member of the Aster Family. It’s a perennial and it blooms from August to October, so right about now you should start looking for these wonderful plants to start blooming in our prairies and down by our beaches. The flower heads are dense deep yellow and often have a pyramid shape. The flowers on the Seaside Goldenrod are typically much larger than the other goldenrod species, so we’re lucky to have this plant.

It has a tight clump of narrow, evergreen basal leaves topped by the leafy erect or arching two-to-eight-foot flower stalks. The leaves on the plant are simple and alternate and they’re waxy to help the plant retain water and are an adaptation to the drying effects of salt spray. This is one reason that you will see this plant down on Galveston Island State Park near the beaches and the dunes. The leaves are also somewhat succulent.

This plant can easily be propagated through seeds. The seeds are ripe November to December, and, if you store them properly, you could potentially store goldenrod seeds for up to four years.

Seaside Goldenrod mainly grows east of the Mississippi from Canada to the Great Lakes region, south along the mid-Atlantic coast to Florida, and as far as west Texas. There is some disagreement about whether this plant is also found in Mexico. Some people think it’s a different species, and some people think it’s a hybrid of Seaside Goldenrod. But we’re lucky enough to have it here in Texas.

So, it’s found in the coastal marshes, dunes, and beaches. Again, it’s resistant to salt spray. So, in your garden it would do best in a sunny location with sandy soils.

It doesn’t spread by rhizomes, nor does it become invasive. And if you’re interested, you can pinch the growing tips in June for a more compact plant because, again, it does get up to eight feet tall. So, if you don’t want it to be that tall just clip it off in June.

Seaside Goldenrod also blooms about the same time as Ragweed, and it’s often incorrectly blamed for allergies or hay fever. The flowers are actually insect pollinated and not wind pollinated because the pollen is too heavy and sticky to become airborne. So, it’s not what’s causing your allergies. I thought for years that I was allergic to goldenrod but it’s actually Ragweed and not goldenrod, so I’m so happy to find out that I can plant this in my garden and not need to worry about sneezing.

Seaside Goldenrod has a very special value for wildlife. It provides food and shelter for many insects, birds, and small mammals. It’s a great nectar source for the migrating Monarchs because it’s blooming in the fall right at the time that they are migrating through Houston.

It attracts large numbers of native bees and also is an important food source for honeybees. I’ve seen a lot of different type of wasps and other insects also nectaring on this plant.

Another special value for wildlife is that the Seaside Goldenrods typically have predatory wasps or small insects that form galls on the plants, and that’s g-a-l-l. So, a gall is basically a swelling of the tissue with an egg inside of it. Its a little insect inside there and as the insect grows, the gall serves to protect it. But that gall also serves as a food source in the winter for birds such as chickadees and woodpeckers.

So, you can see how really important this plant is for wildlife in our area.

I hope you can secure one of the Seaside Goldenrods for your own backyard or for your prairie or for your house at the beach.

[MUS—AND THAT’S IT]

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Plant of the month for August is Splitbeard Bluestem, Andropogon ternarius, and also called Feather Bluestem or Paintbrush Bluestem. It is a native. It's a warm season grass. It's a perennial. It's a bunchgrass. By warm season, it means that it's dormant in the winter and starts growing in the spring as the weather warms up. A bunchgrass tends to stay in a small circle or a bunch. The grass has numerous thin basal leaves, which usually stay about 12 or 15 inches tall, which makes it ideal in our home landscapes. It grows best in part shade to full sun. And this grass will be available at our plant sale on October 20 and 21. It prefers to grow in sand or well-drained soil, which we kind of struggle with here, but it does do well. It's shade tolerant and drought tolerant. I know the camera has a hard time focusing on those light hairy little seeds. The bloom time is from August to November. In late summer, it will send up its bloom stalk, which may be up to three feet tall. And, as the seeds on the long slender stalk mature, they'll split into two tiny stems about two inches long, each with seeds of fluffy white tufts. The seeds are wind distributed. The plants may be started from seed or another way is to dig your mature plant and with your shovels, cut it into maybe four sections, which then can be replanted in other places in your yard or shared with some of your neighbors. It's an easy plant to grow. Splitbeard can be found on the prairie with Little Bluestem and it's great when it's seen in the afternoon sun en masse; reminds me of snowflakes on the branches. And it can be used in a winter dried arrangement in the house. Native bees can use Splitbeard Bluestem for nesting materials. And until their bloom stalk is sent up, the narrow basal leaves are hard to distinguish from other bunchgrasses such as Sideoats Grama. And there it is. And you note how the seeds are all on one side, thus its name. We don't have any of this one for sale at our fall sale. Maybe we will in the spring, in April. But it was interesting, I thought, when I looked for Splitbeard Bluestem in the Wasowski book of Native Texas Plants these two bunchgrasses were on the same page. So, that is the story of the Sideoats Grama and the Splitbeard Bluestem.

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About the Region

2026 Fall Symposium Logo

This low-elevations region of Texas extends inland from the barrier islands, about 60 or so miles, and stretches from Brownsville to Louisiana. In total, it covers about 9.5 million acres, with a high point of 150 feet in elevation. More than 1000 species of plants can be found in this region. On the southern end, species more common in Mexico (such as Sabal mexicana) and Central America occur.

The barrier islands provide us with dune systems, and clay flats to the inland side, which have species found in these areas alone. Many plants here, such as Ipomoea pes-caprae (beach morning glory), can be found throughout tropical regions of the globe. I’ve encountered the same species on the beaches of Guam.

Once inland, vast marshes and wet prairies occur. Occasionally, oak (Quercus fusiformis) groves can be found. Common grasses include species of Bothriochloa, Paspalum, and Sporobolus; eastern gamagrass (Tripsacum dactyloides); and switchgrass (Panicum species). Many rivers and creeks cut through the Gulf Prairies, and along these riparian areas various species of trees, Sabal minor, and other plants adapted to clay soils can be found. Due to overgrazing, farming, and fire suppression, woody species such as mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa) and huisache (Acacia farnesiana), and invasive species such as chinaberry (Melia azedarach), Brazilian pepper (Schinus terebinthifolius), and Chinese tallow (Sapium sebiferum) have increased and displaced our native flora.

Source: Wildflowers of Texas by Michael Eason