Hi Julie – I haven’t tried to cut it back before. I have trimmed back several other species to keep them shorter, and they bloom. I think the only way would be to try it. If I remember, I can trim one of my stalks back. I’ll let you know the results! But I know that trimming the stalks works on New England Aster and Lanceleaf Coreopsis.

-Joe

Thanks, Joe! We’re in Zone 5a in Wisconsin, so a bit behind you. Luckily, we don’t see a lot of Bradford Pears in our older neighborhood!

One of the things I loved about our Cup Plants last season was that they made a good home for Monarch Butterfly chrysalises. We planted Swamp Milkweed next to the Cup Plants, and the Monarchs seemed to really like the combo.

We have an amazing nursery for native plants in our area (The Flower Factory), so we got them there and planted them when they were about a foot tall. The downside of not doing them from seed is that I had no idea what to expect this spring. The picture of them emerging in your garden is helpful – thanks!

Hi Scott- thanks for the compliment on the video. They normally start pushing leaves in April (Zone 6/7). Actually, my Cup Plants just started emerging in the last couple of weeks. We’ve had such a crazy Spring this year. We are located in South Central Pennsylvania, which is Zone 6/7. A better indicator for when the Cup Plants emerge would probably be timing it relative to other plants emergence that are more noticeable.
I would say once the horribly invasive Bradford Pear Trees flower, you should be able to see your Cup Plants. The Bradford Pear trees are those all-to-common white flowering pear trees that tend to line streets and peoples yards, as well as abandoned farm fields. The Cup Plant is somewhat slow to start, and won’t really grow fast until temperatures are warmer all the time. Yesterday we hit 60F+ and today it was 40F.

But, because of your comment I just went outside and snapped a pic of one of our Cup Plants and added it to the article, under the ‘Growing Conditions’ heading. This was the largest of all of the Cup Plants that are emerging. It receives the most sunlight. For reference, there are four other plants nearby. Two of them are on a slight Northern slope, and have barely have any leaves pushing through. So, same plant, very close location – but probably different temp due to the light.

Also, if you liked that video – we have another one on our YouTube channel that is all of the raw footage of the Cup Plant. On rainy days it is nice to just have it on as an ambient background when we can’t be outside gardening!

I approach this two ways.

1 – if The plant will self-seed to an absurdly high level, I dead-head or cut it down in the Fall. Then, I will just leave the plant on top of a brush pile (we live near some woods) so that any insect larva will be able to emerge in the Spring.

2 – If I’m not worried about self-seeding from the plant, I leave the stalks alone until about a week after seeing insects in the Spring. That way I can be pretty sure that any bugs inside a stalk should have emerged. In general, they are just overwintering in them, so they will leave once temperatures warm up.

I actually just did this to my Cup Plant stalks about a week ago. They are laying in some grass/brush on the border of the woods.