Lionsheart....

....also known by it's official name of Physostegia Virginiana--a member of the mint family.  This isn't the same "wild" area I was in a couple of days ago--this one is in Grant Park which is a little further south. Four or five years ago this park also left a small area "wild", and the response from people in the community was so overwhelmingly positive that two years ago the park crew dug up a huge area that runs parallel to the inlet off Lake Michigan, cordoned it off, and planted as well as seeded it with lots of native plants. They left it cordoned off all last summer so that no one could walk through it, and it didn't look like much, but this year the fencing is down and the area is glorious!!  There are wild chicory plants, milkweed, monarda, liatris, snapdragons, trifolium, rudbeckia  (that's almost taller than I am), and many more that I don't recognize. I stopped to talk to a couple of bird/butterfly watchers who said they come at least 3 times a week, as the flowers have brought in so many more species of both, and there was another photographer there as well, raving about the selection of flowers there. Hats off to Grant Park for a job well done!!