From “Rudbeckia: Yellow Coneflower” in Armitage’s Native Plants for North American Gardens by Allan M. Armitage:
“Rudbeckias, along with echinaceas and gaillardias, are so common they don’t even need a common name. Approximately fifteen species have been described, all native to this country, from the eastern seaboard to the prairie states; perhaps fewer than six are known by gardeners, but at least a couple of those are known very, very well. The wonderful old-fashioned black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) has been so bred and wed it is scarcely recognizable; and then there’s that little-known variant (var. sullivantii) of a formerly little-known species (R. fulgida) that exploded on the garden scene when the Germans discovered it and called it ‘Goldsturm’ — no landscape is safe from its yellow and black flowers.
“That rudbeckias are so common is testament to their toughness and their success and the reason we (or at least landscapers) keep planting these darn daisies. To be honest, I love most of them, and it is nice to know that, rather than scour the Internet, we can stroll up to almost any retail outlet, put our money down, and walk out with a native plant that was part of Lewis and Clark’s journey….
“Of all the coneflowers, I admit to liking [Rudbeckia triloba] the most. It doesn’t match the flower power of ‘Goldsturm’, or the stature of Rudbeckia maxima or the fragrance of R. subtomentosa — it is simply a doer. They are short-lived to be sure but seed around sufficiently to always provide a plant or two. The leaves are three-lobed mainly at the base, losing the lobes as they ascend the stems. The yellow flowers are small and surround a black disk. Literally hundreds of small flowers can cover a single plant in mid to late summer…. This is a cottage garden rudbeckia and looks at home in any informal garden, including a meadow.”
From “The Wagon Train” in The Great River and Small, and Other Poems by Welborn Hope:
Like a long snake, the wagon train
Wound across the lush-green plain.
Beside it, ready for alarm,
Outriders rode, rifle on arm.
Toward the sunset, it crawled on,
And flowers of the Southwest shone….
Golden rudbeckia burned afar
To brand on the plain a flaming scar;
Modest centaurea were scattered about
Among gaillardias‘ gleaming rout;
Pink phlox plaited the prairie’s hem,
And coreopsis made a diadem.
Savage and hushed, a beautiful land….
Hello!
This is the first of two posts with new photographs of Rudbeckia triloba from Oakland Cemetery. The Rudbeckia genus has an extensive presence as a native plant throughout nearly all of North America (see this Rudbeckia distribution map), with an equally extensive presence as an introduced plant in much of Europe and parts of Asia. The Rudbeckia triloba species distribution is somewhat more limited: it’s considered native in eastern North America throughout the United States and Canada and parts of the central United States, though isn’t as common to western states or provinces (see this map for the species).
Regardless of where in the world you’re reading from, there’s a good chance that this plant or its relatives and variants look very familiar, given how widespread the genus is and how adaptable the species are to both landscaped and wild environments. Coneflower, Thin-Leaved Coneflower, Three-Leaved Coneflower (“three-leaved” being synonymous with “triloba”), and Brown-eyed Susan are among the common names for R. triloba, and R. triloba can often be distinguished by its flower petals. Each one is a richly saturated yellow with orange tones close to the center disk structures. Usually the petals are present in numbers between five and seven, and — distinct from many other Coneflowers — they’re short, overlapping, and have rounded (as opposed to pointed) tips.
There are several kinds of similar Coneflowers at Oakland, but for this shoot I hunted down only those I believed were R. triloba because they can be especially photogenic. I produced several compositions like this one…
… where a single plant with quite a few flowers of its own is far enough from those in the background to show some flowers up close and in focus with others presenting a color show behind them. There’s no editing trickery here: I took the shot with an f/8 aperture, which provided enough depth of field to capture the foreground bunch while reproducing those behind it with a soft, smooth blur.
On the other hand, it’s easy to find single and separated plants — especially at the edges of a large grouping — where it’s possible to examine some in isolation. Photos like these two, for example…
… show how long the thin stems of R. triloba can get, and how — as they curve downward from the weight of the flowers or just from age — they start to take on an almost vine-like appearance, something I’ll have more examples of (and will point out) in the second post in this series.
Thanks for reading and taking a look!
