In-Depth Description
This mound-shaped, deciduous shrub is native to wet meadows, wet pastures, boggy areas, marshes, fields, and lake margins from Nova Scotia to Ontario south to Kansas, Louisiana and Georgia. It can form thickets of erect, slender, wand-like, unbranched stems, 3-6 ft tall. The orange to reddish-brown bark is exfoliating and the fall foliage is yellow. Dried flowers form a brown, capsule-like fruit that birds feed on throughout the fall. Steeple bush is effectively used in groupings and in border areas and thrives along the banks of water features in the landscape. Its dense, steeple-shaped, branched clusters of pink flowers are recognized by pollination ecologists as attracting large numbers of native bees.
