Helenium elegans facts for kids
Quick facts for kids Helenium elegans |
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| Scientific classification | |
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Helenieae
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| Genus: |
Helenium
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| Species: |
H. elegans
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| Binomial name | |
| Helenium elegans DC. 1836
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Helenium elegans is a wild plant from North America, often called pretty sneezeweed. It's a type of plant that lives for many years (a perennial plant) and belongs to the sunflower family. You can find it growing naturally in the south-central parts of the United States and in northeastern Mexico.
Contents
About Pretty Sneezeweed
What Pretty Sneezeweed Looks Like
Helenium elegans is an annual herb, which means it grows from a seed, flowers, produces seeds, and then dies all within one year. This plant can grow quite tall, up to 120 centimeters (about 4 feet). Its stems have special "wings," which are like thin flaps of tissue running down their sides.
One single plant can produce 200 or more small flower heads. These flower heads grow in groups that branch out. Each flower head is almost perfectly round and is nearly covered with up to 700 tiny disc florets. These disc florets are yellow near the bottom but turn brown towards their tips.
Besides the disc florets, there are also 1 to 17 ray florets. These are the parts that look like petals, and they can be either yellow or brown.
Where Pretty Sneezeweed Grows
You can usually find Helenium elegans growing in wet places. It likes to grow along the banks of streams and in ditches where there is plenty of moisture.
Different Kinds of Pretty Sneezeweed
There are a couple of different types, or "varieties," of Helenium elegans:
- Helenium elegans var. amphibolum (A.Gray) Bierner - This variety is found in Texas in the United States, and in Coahuila, Nuevo León, San Luis Potosí, and Tamaulipas in Mexico.
- Helenium elegans var. elegans - This variety grows in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana in the United States.
