Virginia ecotype
- Duration: Perennial
- Habit: Upright, naturalizing
- Size: 2 to 3 feet tall; about half as wide
- Flowering Time: July to September
- Bloom Color: White
- Habitat: Moist meadows, open woodlands, stream banks, and prairies
- Moisture: Dry to moist; well-drained to seasonally wet
- Light: Full sun to part shade, best performance in full sun
- Soils: Loamy, sandy, and rocky soils; tolerates clay
- Uses: Pollinator gardens, woodland and shade gardens, native plant restorations, low naturalized meadows, rain gardens
Eupatorium pubescens (Hairy thoroughwort)
Bonesets are valuable plants for pollinators, attracting a diverse array of bees, butterflies, moths, and wasps with its nectar-rich white clusters of blooms. It is especially favored by native bees and skippers, and serves as an important late-season nectar source.
Eupatorium pubescens is known as hairy boneset, and sometimes also called round-leaf boneset, though the latter common name also applies to the closely related Eupatorium rotundifolium. Hairy boneset flowers a month earlier and prefers more forested or woodland's edge settings.
It typically occurs in xeric to mesic soils, being better able to tolerate poor, shady and dry conditions compared to many other Eupatoriums. But hairy boneset is quite adaptive to soil types and moistures, including wetter conditions. We find it thrives in a part shade garden with little competition, where most other Eupatoriums don't perform well.