Blue Mistflower

About the Blue Mistflower

Blue Mistflower is the butterfly magnet of Texas fall - a knee-high native perennial whose fuzzy, powder-blue to violet flower heads have no petals at all, just puffs of threadlike disk florets that give whole colonies the look of drifting smoke.

That fuzz is a nectar buffet: on a warm October day a good mistflower patch hums with queens, monarchs, skippers, longtails, and bees, and butterfly gardeners plant it as reliably as milkweed. It spreads by rhizomes into generous colonies along creek banks, ditches, and woodland edges, blooming hardest from late summer through frost.

In Texas it grows naturally through the eastern two-thirds of the state, favoring moist soils and part shade, and its tougher cousin Gregg's Mistflower covers similar duty in the drier west. For finding and photographing fall butterflies, staking out a blooming mistflower colony beats almost any other strategy.