Dame’s Rocket (Hesperus Matronalis) is a non-native, short lived perennial. It is very common, grows all over the place, is beautiful and smells nice, most strongly in the evening, what’s not to love? Well, it does grow as a weed in our Maitland, NS garden and it’s hard to make a concentrated effort to get rid of it.
It has knobby, horizontal rhizomes that are not fragile and are not that easy to pull up. The flowers are pink, white or purple, have four petals and six yellow stamens.
Dame’s Rocket forms colonies in meadows and grows under hardwoods, but not conifers. You see it along fences, in ditches - everywhere. It arrived in North America in the 1600s.