Lance Leaved Coreopsis


How to Grow Lance-Leaved Coreopsis

Lance leaved coreopsis
Some of my lance-leaved coreopsis. It is one of the few perennials that will bloom most of the season so it is handy stuff to have around if you don't mind deadheading.

Lance-leaved coreopsis is a perennial prairie plant with daisy-like yellow flowers about two inches across. It has the great virtue of blooming over a long season from June to September if you keep cutting the spent flowers. Cut the stem just above the first leaf down from the flower because more flower buds are likely to form there. The way deadheading works is that when seeds form it sends a chemical signal to the plant that it has produced seeds for the year and the flower forming mechanism is turned off. Cut the spent flowers and the plant keeps producing flowers.

Plants can reach about three feet and fall over and look sloppy, one way to deal with this is to plant them along a chain-link fence that will tend to hold the stems up. I can't comment much on how to start them, once upon a time I got them in a package of wild flower seeds and they take care of themselves. They don't bloom the first year.

Sometimes you can get a well-bred version of this plant however there is also the very similar plant, large flowered coreopsis (C. grandiflorum) that comes in several well-bred varieties as plants and in the form of seeds.

If you have any questions or comments, write me.

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