Michigan Bupleurum

Bupleurum is that rare stem that behaves like foliage and flower at once, sending up branching sprays of rounded, eucalyptus-like leaves topped with airy umbels of chartreuse. The color is a clean, citrusy yellow-green that no plain leafy green quite matches, and the fine, see-through texture lets it drift between show flowers like a soft haze rather than a solid block. A few stems worked through a bouquet add both structure and a fresh pop of lime that flatters warm and cool palettes alike.

Botanically it sits in the carrot family, which is why its tiny blooms gather into the lacy, umbrella-shaped clusters called umbels. That family trait is more than pretty: the shallow, clustered flowers of the carrot family are well suited to ladybugs, parasitic wasps, and predatory flies, along with a wide range of small pollinators. Bupleurum is not a Michigan native, though. The common cut-flower species traces back to the eastern Mediterranean and western Asia, so rather than claim it as wild here, we grow it as a cool-season summer crop in our member farmers’ fields, where the plants scatter their green umbels for beneficial insects to work. You can read more about the species at the Wikipedia entry for Bupleurum rotundifolium.

Getting bupleurum from our collective keeps that delicate airiness intact. Cut fresh by a member farmer nearby and moved quickly to the barn, the fine stems arrive perky and vivid instead of collapsing the way trucked-in filler often does, which is the whole difference between bright greenery and a tired green. Reserve a DIY bucket and ask for bupleurum as your airy lime filler, request it in a mixed bucket, or let our floral designers weave it through custom bouquets and event work where that chartreuse haze ties every color together.