Wildflowers like this dense-flowered aster, also known as heath, are a boon to bees, butterflies and birds in fall, when far fewer plants are in bloom than in spring and summer. Be kind to these creatures and beautify your yard by letting some wildflowers grow.

Before the heavens opened up last week and gave us rain for days on end, near drought conditions were clobbering flowers, trees and vegetable gardens in the region. The weather had stayed hot, windy and waterless for weeks.

In my own yard, the grass was a disaster, dried up leaves were falling off trees early without turning red, orange or yellow and a few late raspberries looked like raisins. Yet, there among the brown desiccated  remains of a lawn, some scraggly green stuff a bit like asparagus fern had burst into bloom. A mass of small, white, star-shaped flowers adorned every branch of the plant, down to the very tip. Every tip bore a flower, too, as though an over-zealous decorator had determined to leave no space bare.

The plant sprang up after I abandoned mowing because the weather was so hot (I have a push mower) and the grass so burned that cutting it might have jeopardized what looked like its tenuous grip on life. What was the plant? Star boltonia (also known as white doll’s daisy)? Flat-top white aster (a.k.a. parasol whitetop)? Heath (a.k.a. white heath or dense-flowered aster)?

Wildflowers can be difficult to identify if one tries to match them up to photos in a book or online. The key may be their foliage or height, although the height can vary dramatically, according to the quality of the soil. All three of the plants above have flowers resembling asters, but only heath has leaves similar to the ferny stuff growing in my lawn.

Heath has an amazing range of height – from half a foot to 6-1/2 feet tall. My mystery plant varies from just a few inches tall, with a few brave flowers, where I’d inadvertently mowed it before I stopped mowing…to about thigh-high. Finally, the description in its third name, “dense-flowered,” certainly did match what I was looking at. Still, I’m not 100% sure.

Wildflowers, which often are native plants, generally produce flowers that look more delicate and wispy than the blossom of their cultivated counterparts. But don’t let that fool you. They’re tough and they tolerate challenging local conditions like drought and poor soil better than their showier cousins grown especially for the gardening industry.

As an experiment, I tried watering some of the wildflowers growing in my lawn, figuring I should give them the same care as my thirsty hydrangeas. The logic was that they produce blossom which probably feeds butterflies and hummingbirds at a time of year when fewer nectar rich flowers are available than in spring and summer. All indigenous asters – and there are quite a few – appeal to butterflies. As I write, two hummingbirds have not yet left my yard to migrate south.

Proceeding with the experiment, I watered some of the mystery plants, but not the others. I wanted to see if watering made any difference to the way they looked the next day. The hydrangeas, who’ve given me a crash course in emergency horticultural care by flopping their leaves dramatically every time it gets really hot and humid, certainly revive dramatically when watered.

To my surprise, the watered heath (if that’s what it is) and the un-watered heath looked exactly the same the next morning. This result reinforced what I’d learned about native plants – that a great advantage for the gardener who plants them, or lets them grow unhindered, is that they need much less care than the average garden plant.

Strolling around the edge of a tidal marsh which borders my yard, I spotted more native beauties in flower. Goldenrod, with its yellow bracts of flowers that brighten the landscape at this time of year, was unmistakable. Hyssop-leaved thoroughwort (a.k.a. hyssop-leaved eupatorium) had appeared in a few spots, with its profusion of skinny, white, bud-like flowers borne at the top of each plant, like a crown. Saltmarsh fleabane, whose blossom resembles fuzzy pink buttons, had popped up in force. About a dozen saltmarsh fleabanes were growing in an area formerly bare.

Of interest to gardeners who hate phragmites . . .

For those of us plagued by invasive phragmites, the tall reeds that colonize wetlands to the point that nothing else will grow there, saltmarsh fleabane is an intriguing plant. It has the unusual talent of being able to survive for years under stands of phragmites. In my marsh, the plant appeared in an area I had cleared of phragmite stems after an expert sprayed the reeds to kill them two years ago.

Removing dead phragmites is slow, hazardous work. The stems break easily and splinter. The splinters somehow find their way into leather gardening gloves and can pierce one's flesh and cause an infection. I’ve learned to shake out my gloves frequently and to put them on with great care, in case a splinter is lodged in a finger of the gloves. But I should add that I found a beautiful bird’s nest that had fallen out of a crape myrtle tree. The main material used to build it was phragmite leaves.

Back to the main subject. The stretch of marsh I had cleared looked bare and sad without vegetation. Then, the saltmarsh fleabane appeared. I’ve seen precious few butterflies this fall, but I hope those I did see – as well as any I missed – found their way to the saltmarsh fleabane, goldenrod, hyssop-leaved thoroughwort and heath.

Remember that after a rainfall, not to mention the many days of rain we’ve had recently, is the best time to weed because the ground is soft and weeds’ roots come out much more easily than usual.

And consider leaving some wildflowers to flourish in your yard. Some people think all wildflowers are weeds; but plenty of them are beautiful, in addition to feeding birds and other wildlife and benefiting the environment in ways we may not even know about.

In the meantime, happy gardening!

Editor’s note: Laetitia Sands is a Master Gardener in Dorchester County.