Northern Prairie Wildlife Research Center
Sneezeweed (Helenium autumnale)
- Family: Aster (Asteraceae)
- Flowering: August-November.
- Field Marks: This sneezeweed differs by its flower
heads with yellow centers and its lanceolate to elliptic leaves.
- Habitat: Along streams, around ponds and lakes,
roadside ditches, wet meadows, prairies, low woods.
- Habit: Perennial herb with fibrous roots.
- Stems: Erect, branched or unbranched, smooth,
slightly winged, up to 4 feet tall.
- Leaves: Alternate, simple, elliptic to lanceolate,
pointed at the tip, tapering to the base, with or without fine
teeth, smooth, up to 6 inches long, up to 1 1/2 inches broad;
basal leaves absent at flowering time.
- Flowers: Many crowded into a head with several heads
per plant, each head up to 2 1/2 inches across, subtended by
numerous very narrow, pointed, hairy bracts; the outer flowers
yellow and ray-like, often pointing downward; the inner flowers
yellow, tubular, forming a round disk up to 3/4 inch across.
- Sepals: 0.
- Petals: Some yellow, 3-notched at the tip, ray-like,
10-22 in number; others purple, 5, united to form a short tube.
- Stamens: 5.
- Pistils: Ovary inferior, hairy.
- Fruits: Achenes hairy with short brown bristles at
- Notes: The flower heads of this species are reported
to be poisonous to livestock.
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