Common Dittany - that's what it was and here's how I found it

In a previous post I included this image of a plant I saw on my trip to Mount Nebo State Park in Arkansas. It was a small plant with these delicate little lavender flowers that I thought might be a nice native plant addition to my garden. I didn't recognize it from my plant studies in college, so I've been keeping an eye out as I research native plants on various websites. Well, I finally found it while cross referencing the wildflowers available at Missouri Wildflower Nursery in Jefferson City. Here's a link to the plant profile on the USDA plants site http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=CUOR. I found another even better description on this site http://www.missouriplants.com/Blueopp/Cunila_origanoides_page.html. This plant has an added benefit of producing frost flowers in the fall. That would be interesting!

I've added links to the Missouri Wildflower Nursery, USDA's plant profile search, and the Missouri Plants site to my links list. These seem to be the sites I've used the most in my recent research. I've had literally hours of fun browsing these sites.