HELIANTHUS MULTIFLORUS FL-PL.
H. mollis, so called from the soft white down with which the leaves are covered, grows about 4 feet high. Leaves large, ovate, and sessile; growth of the plant upright, with hardly any branches; flowers pale yellow, about 3 inches across, not very ornamental. Cultivated at Kew, whence I had it.
H. giganteus grows 10 feet high; stem much branched and disposed to curve. Flowers about 2½ inches across, produced abundantly in August; rays narrow and pointed, cupped, with the ends turning outward; leaves lanceolate and sessile; rootstock creeping, forming tuberous thickenings at the base of the stems, which Asa Gray tells us were "the Indian potato of the Assiniboine tribe," mentioned by Douglas, who called the plant H. tuberosus.
FULL SIZED FLOWER OF HELIANTHUS MULTIFLORUS.
H. maximiliani.—Half the height of the last, which it resembles, but the stem is stouter, the leaves larger, as are also the flowers, which are produced later. It is not so floriferous and ornamental as the last.
H. lævigatus.—Smooth stalked, very distinct, does not spread at the roots, which are composed of finer fibers than those of most of the genus; stalks slender and black, growing closely together, branched near the summit, 5 feet high; leaves narrowly lanceolate and acute; flowers plentiful and about 2 inches across; rays few, and disk small.
We are warned that the following species are "difficult of extrication," either confluent or mixed by intercrossing.
H. doronicoides.—I place this the third in merit among perennial sunflowers, H. rigidus and H. multiflorus being first and second. It is 6 feet or 7 feet high, upright in growth, with many stalks. Flowers 3½ inches across, produced from the end of July to the end of September, bright golden yellow; leaves large, ovate, tapering from the middle to both ends; stalk leaves sessile and nearly connate, that is, clasping the stalk by their opposite base. The plant spreads rapidly by running rootstocks, and ripens seed in abundance. Figured as H. pubescens in Botanical Magazine, tab. 2,778.
H. divaricatus resembles the last, but is inferior, being a smaller plant in all parts, especially in the flowers, which come out a month later. The cauline leaves are stalked and diverge widely, which habit gives its name to the plant. A casual observer would hardly notice the difference between this species and the last, but when grown together the superiority of doronicoides as a garden plant is at once evident.