Dye Flowers to Die For

A few years ago, B brought back a free seed package of native coreopsis from the Agricultural Expo in Moultrie, Georgia. We prepared some sandy soil where the water meter is and where the grass is not all that happy, for whatever reason and threw out the seed. The yard slopes down to a swale there.

The first year, they were lovely, so I threw the seed heads around. The second year they were beautiful! So I threw the seed heads into other areas there. This year it is nothing short of spectacular.  Some seeds even had floated further around the swale and the neighbors have a few flowers of their own to enjoy.

This year the bed  is eight feet across the skinny part and over twenty-five feet long.

Coreopsis is the state wildflower of Florida, comprised of 15 species. This is Coreopsis basalis, one of the ones called Dye Flower because it can be used to successfully dye wool and silk yellow, orange or brown, depending on the pH of the dye. It takes a lot of flowers to make dye. We might just have enough!