Few wildflowers reward patience quite like the Common Grass Pink. Growing from a small underground corm in the sodden soils of coastal plain savannas and mountain bogs, it emerges each spring as nothing more than a slender, unremarkable leaf. Then, in early summer, a slender stem rises to 3 feet and unfurls up to fifteen magenta flowers in sequence from base to tip, each one fringed at its center with a tuft of bright yellow, stamen-like hairs. Those hairs are a beautiful deception: bees land expecting pollen and instead find themselves dusted and dispatched to the next flower. The genus name Calopogon, meaning 'beautiful beard,' does the plant full justice.

Grass Pink is not easy to cultivate, and that difficulty is part of its dignity. It requires consistently wet, acidic, nutrient-poor soils, the kind of conditions that favor sphagnum and sundews rather than conventional garden plants. Given the right setting, a boggy rain garden edge or a constructed peat bed in full sun, it can establish and persist. It should never be dug from the wild. Populations across much of its range from eastern Canada south through USDA zones 3 to 9 have declined sharply from habitat loss and illicit collection. Seek out only nursery-propagated stock, and treat each plant as the conservation act it is.