garden adventurer WRITTEN AND PHOTOGRAPHED BY L.A. JACKSON
Strange Beauty: Turtleheads
Pink turtlehead is a tough native perennial that will thrive even in soggy soil.
54 AUGUST 2022
Sometimes a weird name is the best way to describe an unusual flower. Take turtlehead (Chelone sp.), for example. Its hooded blossoms do — with some imagination on your part — look like a turtle poking its head out from a shell. Aside from this plant’s odd name and strange-looking blooms, turtlehead is a rather pretty plant. And it’s pretty tough, too. An herbaceous perennial, it is native to the Southeast and has typical wildflower durability baked into its genes, including being deer resistant. Turtlehead performs best in sunny to semi-shady gardens, but unlike many plants destined for your personal Ponderosa, it will thrive in soggy soil, making it a great addition to a rain garden or low spot in the landscape that turns to muck when the rains come. And it is an obvious option as a marginal plant in a water garden. Turtlehead does provide visual satisfaction, but you have to be patient because it waits until the high summer to begin showing off its peculiar blossoms. By then, flower towers arise on sturdy, 2- to 3-foot stems with the lower clusters opening first, and then the bloom show steadily parades upward. This pleasant progression can last over a month. If the flowers are left to go to seed, your turtlehead patch will continue to grow, just as long as the soil is kept moist to encourage new sprouts. In addition, a turtlehead will slowly expand its clump by way of underground rhizomes. And if you want extra turtleheads for other parts of your landscape or to give away to friends, it can also be propagated by divisions taken in the early spring, just as new growth begins to appear.
