Bleeding Heart (Dicentra spectabilis)

As beautiful as they are, I have to categorize bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis) as very invasive because every year I have dozens of uninvited small new seedlings to find a home for, and this is such a beautiful plant, how can I not find it another place to grow? You can see my problem!

Mature bleeding hearts can reach a height of about two feet, with arching foliage and drooping, heart-shaped flowers. They flower in spring, produce seed pods, and then have a dormancy period. The plant’s common name comes from the unique shape of its flowers… they look like a heart with a drop of blood at the tip. Other names for bleeding heart are lyre flower and Venus’s car. If I don’t remove the seed pods (and believe me, I try to get them all!), I find groups of baby plants growing around the parent plant the next year. Bleeding heart can also be propagated by division.

A cultivar, Alba, has white flowers, and although it is not as striking as the pink bleeding heart, it is still very beautiful and in my experience less likely to produce uninivited seedlings, so I like this one a lot! A new cultivar, Goldheart, has fuchsia flowers and yellow foliage that turns to lime green. I would love to have that one…

Filed Under Old-Fashioned Perennials, Plants in my Gardens