 |
Heliopsis helianthoides |
 |
| Common name |
false sunflower |
| Family |
asteraceae |
| Life cycle |
perennial |
| Flowers |
yellow (summer) |
| Size |
5 ft |
| Light |
full sun |
| Cultural notes |
drought tolerant once established |
From seed  |
germinate at room temperature, don't exclude light
detailed seed-starting info below
|
| Seed ripens | late October |
Nice taller plant for the sunny summer garden. Lots of golden 3" flowers on an upright bushy plant. US prairie native.
|
| | Lorraine Sunshine |
|
The variety 'Lorraine Sunshine' is so completely different that I may give it its own page at some point. It gets mixed reviews from fellow gardeners; I haven't observed it for long enough yet to have an opinion. Its standout feature is striking leaf variegation, with dark green veins on an off-white background. We grew ours from a batch of traded seed; only some of the seedlings displayed the variegation, and even those may not be the same as the real cultivated variety - but I bet they're close. The whole plant is much less vigorous than its wild brother. Even as seedlings, they were weaklings, succumbing much more quickly to drought than the plain-leaved ones arising from the same seed lot. Now in their second summer, our two surviving plants have not grown taller than about a foot, while just a few feet further on, the species is already at three feet tall and still going. All of which isn't good or bad - it's just a different plant that will need different conditions and placement to bring out its best.
|
We left this plant behind in our Pennsylvania garden (and wish it well); we don't grow it in Houston. Seed for this plant is included on my seed trade list About my plant portraits
PlantLinks to other web pages about Heliopsis helianthoides
Some particularly helpful links to other websites
Visitors to this page have left the following comments| bobney | Apr 11, 2005 | what about the problems ?
If you know of any, feel free to note them here. I find this a fairly trouble-free plant. |
| Laura | Aug 04, 2005 | I have this perennial with the varigated leaf and it performed beautifully. Abundant showy flowers seem to be non stop. Regarding insects I had a problem mid spring with a night crawler type caterpillar attacking foliage. I Sprayed once with neem oil and it did the trick.
Currently many insects make their home in this plant but it has remained untouched despite having a wide variety of insects that sample most of the other perennials throughout my gardens. This plant has become one of my favorites. |
| susanlynne48 | Dec 04, 2005 | Laura: probably did in the larva of the checkerspot butterfly, which uses sunflower as a host plant. There are many host plant websites you can check out to see what plants butterflies use to lay eggs for their larva to eat. The checkerspots do feed at night, unlike most caterpillars. After I found out more about butterflies and their host plants, I now plant specific things for them to use in my garden so I can observe the cycle of egg to larva to chrsalid to butterfly.
Susan |
- Seed from '00 garden. Baggy 70F (5%G, 10d)
- Seed from '01 garden. Baggy 70F with light (35%G, 4-7d)
- Seed from '03 garden. Baggy 70F with light (60%G, 6-14d)
- Seed for 'Loraine Sunshine' from '05 trade. Baggy 70F (78%G, 4-9d)
- Same seed as above. Lots of seed to pot at 70F, plenty germinated by 7d
- Seed from '09 garden. Baggy 70F (27%G, 6-11d)
- Seed from '09 garden. Baggy 70F (20%G, 5-19d). A brief excursion to warmer temperature resulted in a flush of germination upon returning to cooler conditions
Light is helpful. So is selecting the plumpest seeds you can find.
I welcome comments about my web pages; feel free to use the form below to
leave feedback about this particular page. For the benefit of other visitors
to these pages, I will list any relevant comments you leave, and if
appropriate, I will update my page to correct mis-information. Faced with an
ever-increasing onslaught of spam, I'm forced to discard any comments including
html markups. Please submit your comment as plain text. If you have a
comment about the website as a whole, please leave it in my
guestbook. If you
have a question that needs a personal response, please
e-mail me.
|
