It did, beautiful 4-petaled pink flowers that look just like the wild phlox that grows along the road in the country. I was elated, thinking I had wild phlox. I took this picture of it to post on this Blog, and then I looked up Dames Rocket on Google. It did not get good reviews. In fact, most of the professional websites consider Dames Rocket, or Hesperis matronalis as "invasive" to the point of crowding out nicer garden plants and advised against buying it outright or accidentally in wildflower mixes.
Not all was negative, however. It was mentioned that it has a nice fragrance and that birds find the seeds tasty.
It definitely is not the wild version of phlox. Wild phlox, phlox divaricata, has 5 petals while Dames Rocket has 4. I have had a little experience with a patch of it that has repeatedly come up in my backyard. It makes a nice looking bouquet for the house and it disappears when the seeds have fallen. So, I'm not sure what makes it "invasive," except perhaps it reappears and has to be pulled as a weed. But hey, isn't that the nature of the beast?
Well, it's blooming profusely around my crabapple tree right now, and has been for several weeks, so I'll see what happens. I have daylilies, Siberian iris, and Black-eyed Susans in that planter bed along with tulips.
I think I'll take the remaining seeds (when you order through an Internet mail-order service, they send you hundreds, if not thousands of seeds, not like the 15 seeds you get in a $1.00 packet at the retail store) and throw them in the ditch by our mailbox. My mother used to call bearded iris "alley plants" because they were so easy to grow, you could grow them out by the alley. So perhaps Dames Rocket is a "ditch plant." Or how about a "mailbox plant." Make that a "country mailbox plant" because I've seen some pretty fancy mailboxes with exotic blooms vining around and over them.
Anyone know how Dames Rocket got their name? They don't look anything like a rocket--they look just like phlox!
