JERUSALEM PURPLE CONEFLOWER

(Rudbeckia hirta) Thistle family



Flower-heads - From 10 to 20 orange-yellow neutral rays around a

conical, dark purplish-brown disk of florets containing both

stamens and pistil. Stem: 1 to 3 ft. tall, hairy, rough, usually

unbranched, often tufted. Leaves: Oblong to lance-shaped, thick,

sparingly notched, rough.

Preferred Habitat - Open sunny places; dry fields.

Flowering Season - May-September.

Distribution - Ontario and the Northwest Territory south to

Colorado and the Gulf States.



So very many weeds having come to our Eastern shores from Europe,

and marched farther and farther west year by year, it is but fair

that black-eyed Susan, a native of Western clover fields, should

travel toward the Atlantic in bundles of hay whenever she gets

the chance, to repay Eastern farmers in their own coin. Do these

gorgeous heads know that all our showy rudbeckias - some with

orange red at the base of their ray florets - have become prime

favorites of late years in European gardens, so offering them

still another chance to overrun the Old World, to which so much

American hay is shipped? Thrifty farmers may decry the

importation into their mowing lots, but there is a glory to the

cone-flower beside which the glitter of a gold coin fades into

paltry nothingness. Having been instructed in the decorative

usefulness of all this genus by European landscape gardeners, we

Americans now importune the Department of Agriculture for seeds

through members of Congress, even Representatives of States that

have passed stringent laws against the dissemination of "weeds."

Inasmuch as each black-eyed Susan puts into daily operation the

business methods of the white daisy (q.v.), methods which have

become a sort of creed for the entire composite horde to live by,

it is plain that she may defy both farmers and legislators. Bees,

wasps, flies, butterflies, and beetles could not be kept away

from an entertainer so generous; for while the nectar in the

deep, tubular brown florets may be drained only by long, slender

tongues, pollen is accessible to all. Anyone who has had a jar of

these yellow daisies standing on a polished table indoors, and

tried to keep its surface free from a ring of golden dust around

the flowers, knows how abundant their pollen is. There are those

who vainly imagine that the slaughter of dozens of English

sparrows occasionally is going to save this land of liberty from

being overrun with millions of the hardy little gamins that have

proved themselves so fit in the struggle for survival. As vainly

may farmers try to exterminate a composite that has once taken

possession of their fields.



Blazing hot sunny fields, in which black-eyed Susan feels most

comfortable, suit the TALL or GREEN-HEADED CONE-FLOWER OR

THIMBLEWEED (R. laciniata) not at all. Its preference is for

moist thickets such as border swamps and meadow runnels.

Consequently it has no need of the bristly-hairy coat that

screens the yellow daisy from too tierce, sunlight, and great

need of more branches and leaves. (See prickly pear.) This is a

smooth, much branched plant, towering sometimes twelve feet high,

though commonly not even half that height; its great lower

leaves, on long petioles, have from three to seven divisions

variously lobed and toothed; while the stem leaves are

irregularly three to five parted or divided. The numerous showy

heads, which measure from two and a half to four inches across,

have from six to ten bright yellow rays drooping a trifle around

a dull greenish-yellow conical disk that gradually lengthens to

twice its breadth, if not more, as the seeds mature.

July-September, Quebec to Montana, and southward to the Gulf of

Mexico.





TALL or GIANT SUNFLOWER

(Heliainthus giganteus) Thistle family



Flower-heads - Several, on long, rough-hairy peduncles; 1 1/2 to

2 1/4 in. broad; 10 to 20 pale yellow neutral rays around a

yellowish disk whose florets are perfect, fertile. Stem: 3 to 12

ft. tall, bristly-hairy, usually branching above, often reddish

from a perennial, fleshy root. Leaves: Rough, firm, lance-shaped,

saw-toothed, sessile.

Preferred Habitat - Low ground, wet meadows, swamps. Flowering

Season - August-October.

Distribution - Maine to Nebraska and the Northwest Territory,

south to the Gulf of Mexico.



To how many sun-shaped golden disks with outflashing rays might

not the generic name of this clan (helios = the sun, anthos = a

flower) be as fittingly applied: from midsummer till frost the

earth seems given up to floral counterparts of his worshipful

majesty. If, as we are told, one-ninth of all flowering plants in

the world belong to the composite order, of which over sixteen

hundred species are found in North America north of Mexico,

surely over half this number are made up after the daisy pattern

(q.v.), the most successful arrangement known, and the majority

of these are wholly or partly yellow. Most conspicuous of the

horde are the sunflowers, albeit they never reach in the wild

state the gigantic dimensions and weight that cultivated, dark

brown centered varieties produced from the COMMON SUNFLOWER (H.

annus) have attained. For many years the origin of the latter

flower, which suddenly shone forth in European gardens with

unwonted splendor, was in doubt. Only lately. it was learned that

when Champlain and Segur visited the Indians on Lake Huron's

eastern shores about three centuries ago, they saw them

cultivating this plant, which must have been brought by them from

its native prairies beyond the Mississippi - a plant whose stalks

furnished them with a textile fiber, its leaves fodder, its

flowers a yellow dye, and its seeds, most valuable of all, food

and hair oil. Early settlers in Canada were not slow in sending

home to Europe so decorative and useful an acquisition. Swine,

poultry, and parrots were fed on its rich seeds. Its flowers,

even under Indian cultivation had already reached abnormal size.

Of the sixty varied and interesting species of wild sunflowers

known to scientists, all are North American.

Moore's pretty statement,



"As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets

The same look which she turn'd when he rose,"



lacks only truth to make it fact. The flower does not travel

daily on its stalk from east to west. Often the top of the stem

turns sharply toward the light to give the leaves better

exposure, but the presence or absence of a terminal flower

affects its action not at all.



Formerly the garden species was thought to be a native, not of

our prairies, but of Mexico and Peru, because the Spanish

conquerors found it employed there as a mystic and sacred symbol,

much as the Egyptians employed the lotus in their sculpture. In

the temples the handmaidens wore upon their breasts plates of

gold beaten into the likeness of the sunflower. But none of the

eighteen species of helianthus found south of our borders

produces under cultivation the great plants that stand like a

golden-helmeted phalanx in every old-fashioned garden at the

North. Many birds, especially those of the sparrow and finch

tribe, come to feast on the oily seeds; and where is there a more

charming sight than when a family of goldfinches settle upon the

huge, top-heavy heads, unconsciously forming a study in sepia and

gold?



On prairies west of Pennsylvania to South Dakota, Missouri, and

Texas, the SAW-TOOTH SUNFLOWER (H. grosse-serratus) is common.

Deep yellow instead of pale rays around a yellowish disk

otherwise resemble the tall sunflower's heads in appearance as in

season of bloom. The smooth stalk, with a bluish-hoary bloom on

its surface, may have hairs on the branches only. Long,

lance-shaped, pointed leaves, the edges of lower ones especially

sharply saw-toothed, their upper surface rough, and underneath

soft-hairy, are on slender, short petioles, the lower ones

opposite, the upper ones alternate. Honeybees find abundant

refreshment in the tubular disk florets in which many of their

tribe may be caught sucking; brilliant little Syrphidae, the

Bombilius cheat, and other flies come after pollen; butterflies

feast here on nectar, too and greedy beetles, out for pollen,

often gnaw the disks with their pinchers.



Very common in dry woodlands and in roadside thickets from

Ontario to Florida, and westward to Nebraska, is the ROUGH OR

WOODLAND SUNFLOWER (H. divaricatus). Its stem, which is smooth

nearly to the summit, does not often exceed three feet in height,

though it may be less, or twice as high. Usually all its

wide-spread leaves are opposite, sessile, lance-shaped to ovate,

slightly toothed, and rough on their upper surface. Few or

solitary flower-heads, about two inches across, have from eight

to fifteen rays round a yellow disk.



The THIN-LEAVED or TEN-PETALLED SUNFLOWER (H. decapetalus), on

the contrary, chooses to dwell in moist woods and thickets,

beside streams, no farther west than Michigan and Kentucky. Its

smooth, branching stem may be anywhere from one foot to five feet

tall; its thin, membranous, sharply saw-edged leaves, from ovate

to lance-shaped, with a rounded base, roughest above and soft

underneath, are commonly alternate toward the summit, while the

lower ones, on slender petioles, are opposite. There are by no

means always ten yellow rays around the yellow disks produced in

August and September; there may be any number from eight to

fifteen, although this free-flowering species, like the

PALE-LEAVED WOOD SUNFLOWER (H. strumosus), an earlier bloomer,

often arranges its "petals" in tens.