Southern Ontario. It’s warmed up a bit, but we’ve still been getting a bit of snow and freezing rain
Photo 1: cardinal flower
Photo 2: coneflower
Photo 3: coneflower
Photo 4: blue stem goldenrod
Photo 5: snakeroot
Photo 6: beardtongue
Photo 7: smooth blue aster
Photo 8: black eyed Susan
Photo 9: harebell
Is it normal for them to look brown like this?
by Durtaidk6791
12 Comments
Possibly. Give them a gentle tug, if you can lift the plant out of the ground, there’s a good chance it did not make it. If you get any resistance, leave it alone for now.
Anything green is alive. For the rest, you just have to wait and see. It’s totally normal for most or all of the foliage to die in winter. The important part of the plant is the roots. As the weather warms up, the plants will begin pushing out new growth. Some plants wake up as soon as spring hits. Others, you might not see anything until May or even June. Last year, I had a Swamp Milkweed I thought was dead start suddenly pushing out growth in July, a month after all the others in the bed woke up. Just have to wait.
Each plant has it’s own way of overwintering. A lot of plants will have all above ground foliage die off, but some may have evergreen or semi-evergreen parts on them, which is why you have a couple in the pictures that are still green or greenish. Just like your concern with the freezing rain the plants are concerned about this as well, which is why a lot of native plants won’t pop up too early. It’s normal and the ones on your list pretty much won’t wake up until it gets closer to summer. In my area, some of these plants won’t start coming up until June. I typically use [iNaturalist](https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=6883) to try and figure out when some flowers bloom, by seeing what other people have uploaded for pictures.
After reviewing iNaturalist for your area, these plants like; Bloodroot (Sanguinaria canadensis), Yellow Trout Lily (Erythronium americanum), and Hepatica americana and acutiloba, all seem to be blooming sometime between April and May in your region. So, these are some plants that you may want to think about planting if you want some really early flowers.
Up in Wisconsin, all my perennials look completely dead every winter. Thankfully, their roots have stored energy and are just waiting for the right temperatures to grow back.
My cardinal flower, coneflowers, asters, and Susans all look post apocalyptic every winter—they’ll likely come right back. Trim the stems up in spring after it’s 50 degrees (Fahrenheit 🤙)
It’s impossible to tell right now. I’m in 7a and my garden looks like this even the established plants. In May you’ll prob see sprouting. Sometimes it even takes to June. Ya gotta just wait and see! The new growth will come from the bottom of the plant. 🙂
Hello. Fellow Southern Ontarian here with years of native plant experience. Your plants are all likely just fine. That’s what most things look like after five months under snow and ice. You’ve planted things that are very tough and hardy here. Almost nothing is poking up through the soil yet, after this harsh and long winter. I think I’ve maybe seen some spindly little narcissus foliage at my friend’s place. Don’t worry! Have fun and relax!
Edit: Oh, and one additional note. Cardinal flower isn’t always strongly perennial. A single plant can live for years, but sometimes they only live a year or two. However, they will self-seed very readily, so the babies will quickly grow up and replace the mom.
A couple are quite clearly alive. The answer for most of them is “maybe”. You have to wait until proper spring growth to see if they come back or not.
Usually you wait for them to wake up, you can cut back the super dead dry brown stuff though it doesn’t hurt to leave some stubbies up so you know where they are if you plan on doing more planting in the next couple of weeks. You’ll probably find some new growth starting on a couple of them when you do this.
They will come up when they are ready. I suspect all of them are still living in the root.
It is still too early. They should be fine. Give them time. We still have lots of freezing temperatures to come, especially at night. You don’t want growth until it warms up more.
Its been my first winter with native perennials too, and I wasn’t sure what would come back, cause almost everything was brown and dead looking, some were even gone, but the roots were still there and everything came back with maybe one or two exceptions. I had a couple coneflowers, and one had not come back like the others so I thought it hadn’t survived, but it recently sprouted a leaf. Just needed a bit more time. I’m in the southern U.S. so I’m not at all surprised yours are still brown 🙂