Lemon Meringue is a false indigo with long charcoal-gray stems carrying spikes of clear lemon-yellow flowers in late spring over cool blue-green foliage. It builds into a rounded, shrub-like perennial about three feet tall and wide that gets fuller and freer-blooming each year.

Plant it once, in full sun, and leave it: the deep taproot makes it extremely drought tolerant but resentful of moving. It thrives in poor and clay soils, needs no staking or feeding, and bees and butterflies visit the spikes. Interesting seed pods follow.