Plant ID filter

July 23, 2017 2:54 PM

Can you identify this shrub in St Louis? Google has utterly failed me (turns out there are lots of purple flowers).

Some pictures. It is woody and produces small purple flowers throughout the summer and fall. It's a big hit with the local bees, but one of the two died the last winter and I'd like to replace it.

posted by a robot made out of meat to Home & Garden (8 answers total)

Looks like butterfly bush/buddleja.
posted by pullayup at 3:22 PM on July 23, 2017

Best answer: Can't quite tell if it is a caryopteris cladonensis or Russian sage.
posted by sciencegeek at 3:24 PM on July 23, 2017 [3 favorites]

Agree, some kind of butterfly bush. Looks like there are many species.
posted by humboldt32 at 3:38 PM on July 23, 2017

Response by poster: Hmm, looks a lot like Caryopteris × clandonensis! Buddleja also has a lot of beautiful plants, so maybe I'll get both!
posted by a robot made out of meat at 4:47 PM on July 23, 2017

If you get more Caryopteris: we have three cultivars in the gardens here and the one that does the best is C. x cladonensis 'Dark Knight'

Buddleja has been known to be invasive and requires frequent deadheading.
posted by sciencegeek at 5:11 PM on July 23, 2017

Russian sage was my first thought, but this plant doesn't seem to have the whitish/silvery cast to the leaves that is characteristic of Russian sage and I would expect to see more flowers by this time of year. Does the plant smell of sage?
posted by she's not there at 12:05 AM on July 24, 2017

you got your answer, but I'd like to plug a neat app: Pl@ntNet will let you take a picture of a plant, and attempt to identify it.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 6:58 AM on July 24, 2017

Response by poster: That's a neat website. It does fail this example.
posted by a robot made out of meat at 6:27 PM on July 24, 2017