Wright's Skullcap
Scutellaria wrightii
- Sun
- Full Sun, Part Shade
- Water
- Low, Drought tolerant once established
- Mature size
- 6–12" tall × 12–24" wide
- Best for
- Groundcover, Pollinator Plant, Drought-tolerant Landscaping, Native ecosystem plant
Purple — Gallon — $10
About this size
- Gallon
- Our standard size: a 1-gallon nursery pot, about 6–7 inches across.
Pay at the nursery, plus 6.75% sales tax. Send your request and we'll confirm availability and your pickup time within 24 hours, then hold your plants. How it works
Planting & care
- Growth habit
- Low, mounding to spreading perennial
- Typical bloom
- Apr–Jun · Sep–Oct
- Cold hardy to
- Zones 5–8
- Soil
- Well-drained soils; thrives in rocky, sandy, or caliche soils; naturally adapted to limestone-based soils common throughout North and Central Texas
Where to plant
Full sun to part shade, in well-drained rocky, sandy, or caliche soil. It's naturally adapted to the limestone soils common across North and Central Texas, and struggles anywhere water stands.
Watering
Water to get it established, then step back — once rooted in, it's genuinely drought tolerant and prefers to dry out between waterings.
Cutting back
Little maintenance needed. A light trim after the spring bloom can tidy up the mound and encourage denser growth before the fall flush.
About Wright's Skullcap
Wright's Skullcap spends most of the year as a modest, low mound of foliage — then surprises with two separate flushes of small violet-purple flowers, first in late spring and again as the weather cools in fall. Each bloom is tiny and two-lipped, the classic skullcap shape, but they come on thickly enough to draw a steady stream of small native bees.
This is a plant of the limestone outcrops and thin, rocky soils of the Edwards Plateau and Trans-Pecos — it wants exactly the kind of ground most other perennials struggle in. Give it a spot that stays dry between rains and it spreads slowly into a durable, low groundcover that needs almost nothing from you once it's rooted in.
Where it's native
Wright's Skullcap occurs naturally in 2 Texas ecoregions — Edwards Plateau, Trans-Pecos. Plants grown from local ecotypes are best adapted to our soils and climate here in the blackland prairie and post oak savannah.
- 1Trans-Pecos
- 2High Plains
- 3Rolling Plains
- 4Edwards Plateau
- 5Cross Timbers and Prairies
- 6South Texas Plains
- 7Blackland Prairies
- 8Post Oak Savannah
- 9Gulf Prairies and Marshes
- 10Pineywoods
Plants it grows well with
Pink Skullcap
Pink Skullcap is a tidy, drought-tolerant subshrub with vivid pink blooms nearly continuously from May through October.
Blackfoot Daisy
A drought-proof native perennial with cheerful white, daisy-like blooms from spring through frost.
Winecup (Perennial)
A fast-spreading native groundcover with vivid magenta cup-shaped blooms every spring.