Yellow Coneflowers

Sweet Black-eyed Susan, which can get up to 6' tall, is a prairie species that is found from Indiana into Nebraska, southward. The leaves are alternate and softly hairy as opposed to bristly. The basal leaves are on long stalks while the stem leaves are on short stalks or stalkless. Some of these leaves are deeply divided into 3 lobes. Typically there are several individually stalked flower heads at the top of the plant. Each flower head is up to 3" wide, with 6 to 20 yellow ray flowers. The central brown cone is rounded or blunt, and a bit taller than it is wide.

Thin-leaved Coneflower grows to about 5' tall, and is common in moist thickets and along streams and in low woods, as well as prairies and low prairie pastures. It can be found from Iowa south and eastward. Its leaves are rough and bristly on both sides, with coarsely toothed edges and pointed tips. Some of the main leaves are divided into 3 forklike lobes. The flower heads are numerous over the upper part of the plant, individually stalked, and spreading outward away from the main stems of the plant. Each flower head is about 1 3/4" wide, with 6 to 12 ray flowers. The ray flowers are grooved along their length, and notched at the tip.

Green-headed Coneflower, in my opinion, is more similar to Gray-headed Coneflower than it is to these Black-eyed Susan look alikes. It can grow as tall as 10', and have leaves over a foot wide. The central cone is a green knob, surrounded by 6 to 10 drooping ray flowers. It thrives in floodplains, stream banks and rich, moist soil, and can be found the central and eastern U.S.

A few other North American species include yet another Black-eyed Susan look-alike, Rudbeckia fuldiga, which grows in the eastern U.S., and its variants R. fuldiga var. deamii, R. fuldiga var. speciosa, and R. fuldiga var. sullivantii. There is also California Coneflower (R. californica), which is found in the mountain meadows of Oregon and California, and R. maxima, found throughout North America.

Many of them may look like one another, but so what. Yellow Coneflowers are happy, bright splashes of sunshine, and a joy to behold. But if ya do wanna figure out which is which, well, I hope I've helped a little.

"Yellow Coneflowers" © 2002 Gregg M. Pasterick - All Rights Reserved.

All Photographs © Gregg M. Pasterick

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