Black Eyed Susan
Rudbéckia hírta
Yellow
Summer
California, etc.
From one to four feet high, with rough leaves and one or a few handsome flowers, from one to four inches across, with deep yellow rays and a purplish-brown conical center. This comes from the Mississippi Valley, is very common in the East, and becoming common in Yosemite meadows.
Woolly Wyethia—W. mollis.
Balsam-root—Balsamorrhiza Hookeri.
Brass Buttons, Butter-heads
Cótula coronopifòlia
Yellow
Spring, summer, autumn
Cal., Oreg.
This little weed comes from South Africa, but is now common in wet places, especially in the salt marshes around San Francisco Bay, often carpeting the sand and mud with its succulent, trailing stems. The bright green leaves are alternate and smooth, clasping the stem at base, some with toothless edges, others variously cut and lobed, and the flower-heads are about half an inch or less across, like the bright yellow center of a Daisy, without rays. Matricària matricarioìdes is another little weed, common along roadsides, with conical, greenish-yellow flower-heads, without rays, and feathery foliage, which has a strong pleasant fruity smell when crushed, giving it the name of Pineapple-weed and Manzanilla.
Tetradymia
Tetradýmia spinòsa
Yellow
Spring
West, etc.
An odd desert shrub, about three feet high, with gray bark and crooked, gnarly, tangled branches, armed with long spines and clothed with small, downy, pale green leaves. The flower-heads are three-quarters of an inch long, without rays, with pale yellow tube-shaped flowers and downy, white involucres, and are so crowded on the twigs that they appear to be loaded with them, but the coloring is too pale to be effective. This is common in the Mohave Desert and elsewhere on dry hills and plains, as far east as Colorado.
There are a great many kinds of Solidago, most of them natives of North America. On the whole, the western Golden-rods are not so fine as the eastern ones, nor are there so many kinds, though there are quite enough to puzzle the amateur, as they are difficult to distinguish.
Arizona Golden-rod
Solidàgo trinervàta
Yellow
Summer
Arizona