Plant Profile: Golden Alexander (Zizia aurea)

Golden Alexander is a short lived herbaceous perennial and a member of the carrot family, Apiaceae, that also includes parsley, celery, and poison hemlock.  It is a native  native to open woods, floodplains, meadows, thickets, and prairies from Quebec and Saskatchewan, south to Florida and Texas.  Plants grows 1.5’ to 3’ tall from a coarsely fibrous root system and have bight green hairless stems and compound biternate leaves with 3-5 toothed leaflets.  In late spring tiny yellow flowers appear in terminal flat-topped umbels 2-3″ across. but unlike the flowers of other plants in the carrot family, the central flower of the umbel is stalkless.  Although plants are short lived they reseed heavily.   A good choice for a wildflower garden, meadow garden, or native plant garden.  The genus name, Zizia, honors the German botanist Johann Baptist Ziz (1779-1829). The specific epithet, aurea, is the Latin word meaning golden and refers to the color of the flowers.