Sweet Joe-Pye weed is blooming in the meadow. I love its color—a pale mauve unlike that of any other flower that grows on the Perry Farm. It looks like pink smoke hanging over the pond. Or Cinderella’s ball gown, embroidered with gossamer-fine pink silk thread.
I also love its name. The Mohican Joseph Shauquethqueat was known to his white neighbors as Joe Pye, a common surname adopted by members of his tribe (and not coincidentally, one that whites could pronounce). By the 1740s, he was living in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, an area set aside by the state legislature to encourage cooperation among white and indigenous people and to reward the latter for their service in the French and Indian Wars. Shauquethqueat became well-known to his white neighbors because he was both a Mohican chief and a member of Stockbridge’s Board of Selectmen. And at some point they began to identify the native plant– routinely collected by indigenous people to treat fevers– with the Mohican they knew best. Et voilà—Joe-Pye weed. Shauquethqueat’s people would go on to fight with the colonies during the War for Independence, and George Washington himself would order that they be granted safe passage when they eventually were “relocated” to New York state.
Sweet Joe-Pye weed’s Latin name, Eutrochium purpureum, derives from the Greek words “troche” which means “wheel like” (in reference to its whorled leaves) and “purpureum” which means “purple”: Its stems are smooth and mostly green, but they are purple where the leathery leaves join them. A mature plant may grow up to seven feet tall, making Sweet Joe-Pye weed one of the tallest plants on the farm. It is beloved by pollinators with tongues long enough to reach into the tubular flowers– bumble bees, monarchs, black swallowtails, etc.
For more information on Sweet Joe-Pye weed, visit the Illinois Wildflower Guide. For more information on the plant’s common name, see The history and eponymy of the common name joe-pye-weed for eutrochium species (asteraceae).
M. H. Perry 
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