Sandywoods chaffhead is one of those plants that seems designed for overlooked places. At home in the dry, open pine woodlands and sandy piedmont of the southeastern United States, Carphephorus bellidifolius occupies terrain that challenges most ornamentals. Its basal rosette of leaves sits low and patient through the growing season before sending up flower stems in late summer and fall, when the garden's energy has largely moved on.

At one to two feet tall, it is not a dominant presence, but the violet-pink disc flowers — held above the foliage on slender stems, their long styles giving each bloom a softly feathery appearance — earn genuine attention from late-season bees and butterflies. Use it in the front of a naturalistic border, scattered through a dry meadow planting, or at the edge of a woodland path where the soil never quite holds water. It asks for little: full sun, sandy soil, and freedom from competition. In return it gives those late pollinators a reason to linger.