Sedum lanceolatum

Another Pacific Northwest native with genuine local credentials, Sedum lanceolatum — the lanceleaf stonecrop — grows naturally across the western United States and into Canada, turning up on rocky outcrops, talus slopes, and alpine scree from the Cascades to the Rockies and beyond. The leaves are small, fleshy, and lance-shaped, as the name says, and the whole plant forms a compact, low mat that might go unnoticed until it erupts in bright yellow flowers in midsummer — at which point it announces itself clearly. It has the honest simplicity of a plant that evolved to look exactly right in a rocky, sun-baked landscape.

Completely at home in the Pacific Northwest's full range of conditions, S. lanceolatum is a plant that belongs in native plant rock gardens, naturalistic compositions, and anywhere that celebrates the flora of the mountain West. It handles dry summers the way a plant evolved for talus slopes handles them — without noticing. Full sun, gritty drainage, lean soil: those are the conditions it comes from and the conditions it prefers. Growing it in a garden is a small act of connecting the cultivated landscape back to the wild one visible from any Cascade ridgeline. That connection always makes a plant more interesting.