I have split my plants when I bought them. In fact I wont buy a plant unless I can split it and get several from it. You got to look at the base of that plant, if there are several "crowns" then yeah your safe to split it with little or no damage. Now if you only have one "crown" in your pot then I wouldnt touch it till a few years down the road. I think the most splits out of a plant I bought was like 8 out of a 4" pot, I am all about saving some money now. Austinnhanasmom is correct about the reseeding, I have several varities of coreopsis and they all self seed readily. Some bloom the first year from seed later in the season and some will bloom the following year. Plains Coreopsis, Tinctoria Coreopsis is about the worse I have found for reseeding uggg it has set seed in my bermuda grass. I am giving it one more year to get its act together or its compost.

I'm sure that most of the plants on your lists are great and have some wildlife value, Anna, but the ones that jump out at me are - Castillega indivisa/Indian paintbrush - I can only drool at pictures of this beautiful host for buckeyes and fulvia checkerspots since it doesn't occur here, but it's also a good nectar plant for butterflies, and, judging by the looks of the flowers, for hummingbirds, also. It's supposed to be impossible to transplant, but it can be propagated from seeds. If I lived in Oklahoma, I'd order seeds and sow them in a meadow with native grasses - most members of the snapdragon family are parasitic or partially so on grass roots. Centaurea americana - you already have plenty of this - I'd make sure it stays! Antennaria and Artemesia - Both these are host for American ladies, and, if they're as tough as the cudweed in my area, they should be easy to grow. Asclepias, spp. - All of these are desirable, both as hosts for monarchs and the nectar in their flowers, which are real popular with all butterflies. Asters - These give beautiful flowers in the fall that butterflies nectar on, and they're supposed to host pearl crescents. I've planted some rice button asters to add to the naturally occurring asters in hopes of getting PC cats someday. Desmodium - This is the principal host plant for long-tailed skippers in my area - it's VERY easy to grow! Liatris pycnostachya - I just love this beautiful plant, and butterflies love to nectar on the flowers. Tephrosia virginiana/Goat's rue - As far as I know, this plant doesn't host any butterfly, and I've never seen any butterflies or hummers nectaring on the flowers, but it thrives on the poorest, driest, most eroded, pure red/orange clay parts of my property. The rainbow of pastel colors of the flowers is charming, and it might be useful as a host or nectar plant to something - I don't get to the parts of my property where it grows too often. Sherry

I see no reason why they could not produce viable seed, but that isn't the reason the 'Limerock Ruby' is missing. It's because 'Limerock Ruby' is hardy to only USDA hardiness zones 7-10, and therefore is not hardy in your climate. The producer of the plant originally marketed the plant as being hardy to zone 5, but after one winter out on the market all plants in zones 5 and 6 died. The problem occurred because a greenhouse in MI, that was paid to test the plant, kept the plants in a climate-controlled greenhouse all winter, and not out in a field where they would have been affected by the elements. The nursery that I manage wintered-over 100 starter plants in one gallon containers, and all of them died. -Jay

I bought a poppie wildflower seed mix and planted it in our roadside ditch on bare, unimproved mostly clay soil left exposed when the driveway was put in back in 1998 before we built the house. I have never tried the opium or breadseed poppies (Paper somniferum). Within a couple of months of scattering that seed mix and watering it (much less water than they said to give the mix because at that point we were only up here on weekends), I had a beautiful mix of poppies, including the corn poppies (papaver rhoeas) in red, pink and white (singles and doubles) and the Oriental Poppies (Papaver orientale). They were spectactular the first year and ever more spectacular the second year. After the second year they began to decline. Since they aren't supposed to do well in clay soil, I was probably lucky to get two good years out of them as they were in some pretty awful soil. However, they haven't gone completely away. The shirley poppies have reseeded themselves all over. The oriental poppies have not. Here's some of the places they popped up this year: In the gravel driveway down front by the road near where they were originally planted in the ditch. These are small this year due to lack of rainfall--only 4" to 6" tall and the flowers are smaller than usual too. In the ditch across the street from us. In the middle of the road in a small crack in the road. In the driveway beside my veggie garden, about 100' from where they were originally planted. In the south side of the veggie garden near the driveway in heavy soil soil that has been amended with compost and manure, but still remains very clay-ey. In the flower border on the north side of the garden which is largely unimproved clay. In the middle of the bermuda grass in my front yard. In the shrub border on the south side of my house, 300 feet from where they were originally planted. They are in the worst clay there. Didn't come up in the better improved clay. Doesn't make sense. In the extremely thick, horrible clay that surrounds my in-ground tornado shelter. I can't get anything but weeds and bermuda to grow in this soil, but it is covered in red poppies. They come back every year in this area and are very heavy this year, and quite tall, despite the lack of rainfall. In the wetter clay soil on the edge of my water garden. In the butterfly bed outside the northwest corner of my house. In a "waste area" about 150 feet behind my house where erosion has left cuts in the soil and uneven terrain that is hard to mow. This is their first year to pop up here. In the middle of my wildflower meadow area between the house and the woods. Only a few popped up here and couple of years ago, and there's only a couple of plants this year. The foliage ususally appears in April (but as early as late Feb. some years) and the flowers bloom in April/May. I deadhead them every now and then to extend the bloom period. In years with lots of rainfall they will sometimes keep blooming until mid-June. I haven't had as much luck with California poppies, which are smaller and get crowded out of my borders by more aggressive flowers that like our heat more. The first year I planted them, though, when there was nothing else around them, they were gorgeous. I had the tangerine-orange ones. I have tried Oriental poppies a couple of times since I bought that poppie seed mix, and they just didn't do well in my clay. I have grown a poppy seed mix I got from Renee's Garden Seeds that had very full poppies that looked like carnations. I planted them about 6 years ago. Their foliage is bigger and bolder than that of the other poppies I've grown. They get 2 or 3 feet tall and have only a few flowers, but the flowers they do have are gorgeous. They also did quite well for couple of years and then went away. They did bloom later than the red poppies--probably in the very late May to July timeframe. This year 2 of these plants popped up in my shrub bed and I have left them there to see if they will bloom. A friend of mine who has grown poppies for years says they do best if they are in soil that gets tilled or turned over every year. She thinks that if I were to rototill the soil in my ditch where I originally planted the poppy mix, either in the late winter or early spring, I would get a huge amount of poppies from the newly-exposed seed. I might try that next year. I just think of my poppies as "wildflowers" that will bloom for a little while and then go away. I enjoy them while they last, but know that they will only last a month or two. Dawn