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About Golden Alexanders
Golden Alexanders (Zizia aurea) is a native perennial wildflower in the carrot family, Apiaceae. It has cheerful flat-topped clusters of tiny yellow flowers, divided green leaves, and an upright, branching habit. The flower clusters are called umbels, the same general flower arrangement seen in parsley, dill, fennel, and Queen Anne’s lace.
This plant usually blooms in spring to early summer, often filling the gap between early woodland flowers and the big summer meadow bloomers. Its flowers are small individually, but together they create bright golden landing pads for insects. The leaves are shiny green and divided into toothed leaflets, giving the plant a fresh, tidy look before and after bloom.
Golden Alexanders is a wonderful coloring page plant because it has clear shapes and strong habitat value. It offers yellow umbels, leafy stems, divided foliage, small seed heads, and plenty of opportunities to add swallowtail caterpillars, bees, flies, beetles, and butterflies. It is the spring meadow’s little golden chandelier.
Where Golden Alexanders Grows
Golden Alexanders is native to eastern and central North America. It grows in moist prairies, open woodlands, savannas, thickets, limestone glades, bluffs, streambanks, floodplains, powerline clearings, abandoned fields, and other sunny to partly shaded habitats.
This plant thrives in full sun to partial sun and can also grow in light shade. It prefers medium to moist soil, but established plants can tolerate some dry summer conditions. In gardens, it is often easy to grow and may self-seed where conditions are favorable.
Golden Alexanders works well in pollinator gardens, meadow plantings, rain gardens, woodland edges, native borders, and naturalized areas. It pairs beautifully with columbine, wild geranium, bee balm, milkweeds, mountain mint, asters, goldenrods, sedges, little bluestem, and other native plants that carry the garden from spring into fall.
Pollinators It Supports
Golden Alexanders is valuable for early-season pollinators because it provides nectar and pollen when many insects are becoming active. Its flat umbels are especially useful for small bees, flies, beetles, wasps, and butterflies that can easily walk across the clustered flowers. Good visitors to show on a coloring page include small sweat bees such as Lasioglossum species, mining bees such as Andrena species, hover flies such as Toxomerus marginatus, soldier beetles, and tiny beneficial wasps.
Golden Alexanders is also an important host plant for the black swallowtail butterfly (Papilio polyxenes). Black swallowtail caterpillars feed on plants in the carrot family, and Golden Alexanders is one of the native host plants gardeners often use as an alternative to parsley, dill, or fennel. The caterpillars are striking, with green, black, and yellow bands as they mature.
Adult butterflies may also visit the flowers for nectar. Good examples include the black swallowtail, eastern tiger swallowtail (Papilio glaucus), pearl crescent (Phyciodes tharos), and small skippers. For a coloring page, Golden Alexanders pairs beautifully with a black swallowtail caterpillar on the leaves, a tiny hover fly on the yellow umbels, a sweat bee dusted with pollen, or a black swallowtail butterfly hovering nearby.
Coloring Tips
Color the flower umbels bright yellow, golden yellow, lemon yellow, or yellow-green. Since each umbel is made of many tiny flowers, use small dots, little star shapes, or clustered circles rather than large petals. Add deeper gold near the center of each flower cluster and lighter yellow along the outer edges to make the umbels look rounded.
The leaves are medium to deep green, with toothed leaflets and a slightly glossy look. Use darker green along the veins and leaflet edges, with lighter green highlights on the upper surfaces. The stems can be green, yellow-green, or slightly reddish-green.
The seed heads can be colored green when young, then tan, brown, or purplish-brown as they mature. For the background, place Golden Alexanders in a moist meadow, prairie edge, rain garden, open woodland, streambank, or sunny native border. To show wildlife value, include a black swallowtail caterpillar, black swallowtail butterfly, Lasioglossum sweat bee, Andrena mining bee, hover fly, soldier beetle, or small skipper visiting the flowers.