PlantFiles: Rough Blazing Star, Button Blazing Star, Tall Blazing Star, Tall Gayfeather
Liatris aspera

Primarily long-tongued bees, butterflies, skippers, and bee flies visit the flowers. Among the long-tongued bees, this includes honeybees, bumblebees, Little Carpenter bees, Miner bees, and Leaf-Cutting bees. Butterfly visitors include This is a Native to USA.
Monarchs, Painted Ladies, Black Swallowtails, Sulfurs, and others. Other visitors include Green Metallic bees and other Halictine bees. The latter bees collect pollen primarily, and are not effective pollinators. The caterpillars of the rare Schinia florida (Glorious Flower Moth) feed on the flowers and seed capsules of this and other Liatris spp. Mammmalian herbivores, large and small, readily eat the foliage and stems, including rabbits, deer, groundhogs, and livestock. Sometimes small rodents will dig up the corms and eat them. Consequently, this plant may be scarce where there is an overpopulation of these animals.

Just purchased one of these from the local native plants nursery here in the Catskills. Will post back later with results.

Button gayfeather stems, 2 to 5 feet tall, one to few, arise from a woody underground corm. Leaves are alternate. The corms are edible.

This plant also makes good cut flowers and dried flowers. Liatris aspera is probably the most common Liatris over the widest geographic range. It's showy flowers create a magnificent prairie display.