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Tennessee Smart Yards is excited to provide a comprehensive listing of Tennessee native plants that are available commercially. We hope this site helps you select native plants for use in your yard. Feel free to comment and exchange information about these plants, such as your own experience or questions. If you have any pictures you would like to contribute to the collection please feel free to email us at tnyards@gmail.com.
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I hope others will add their favorite plants so I am not the only one posting. In the meantime I can’t resist adding one more flower. It is an annual so it is not in the database but it is a Tennessee native. It is SHOWY PARTRIDGEPEA (CASSIA FASICULATA). I think it is a charming, smaller (2 ft. tall) legume with pretty yellow flowers. It re-seeds itself so readily and comes up so quickly in the spring that it feels like a perennial. It blooms from June to October, needs full sun, and tolerates drier soils. It is supposed to prefer sandy to sandy loams soils but it is doing fine in my heavier clay soil. According to the US Forest Service it has some great characteristics—provides excellent erosion control, improves soil fertility & is very good at fixing nitrogen in the soil, and provides cover for birds, small mammals, and waterfowl when grown in dense stands. It is also larval food for the Eastern Tailed Blue Butterfly. I think it is a charming, dependable addition to my native plantings and I am planning on getting more seed. The close-up photo is courtesy of Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center; the other photo is mine.