Yellow and Orange 



stamens and pistil. Stem: i to 3 ft. tall, hairy, rough, usually 

 unbranched, often tufted. Leaves: Oblong to lance-shaped, 

 thick, sparingly notched, rough. (Illustration facing p. 336.) 



Preferred Habitat Open sunny places ; dry fields. 



Flowering Season May September. 



Distribution Ontario and the Northwest Territory south to 

 Colorado and the Gulf States. 



So very many weeds having come to our Eastern shores from 

 Europe, and marched farther and farther west year by year, it is 

 but fair that black-eyed Susan, a native of Western clover fields, 

 should travel toward the Atlantic in bundles of hay whenever she 

 gets the chance, to repay Eastern farmers in their own coin. Do 

 these gorgeous heads know that all our showy rudbeckias some 

 with orange red at the base of their ray florets have become prime 

 favorites of late years in European gardens, so offering them still 

 another chance to overrun the Old World, to which so much 

 American hay is shipped ? Thrifty farmers may decry the im- 

 portation into their mowing lots, but there is a glory to the cone- 

 flower beside which the glitter of a gold coin fades into paltry 

 nothingness. Having been instructed in the decorative usefulness 

 of all this genus by European landscape gardeners, we Americans 

 now importune the Department of Agriculture for seeds through 

 members of Congress, even Representatives of States that have 

 passed stringent laws against the dissemination of " weeds." In- 

 asmuch as each black-eyed Susan puts into daily operation the 

 business methods of the white daisy (see p. 270), methods which 

 have become a sort of creed for the entire composite horde to live 

 by, it is plain that she may defy both farmers and legislators. 

 Bees, wasps, flies, butterflies, and beetles could not be kept away 

 from an entertainer so generous ; for while the nectar in the deep, 

 tubular brown florets may be drained only by long, slender 

 tongues, pollen is accessible to all. Anyone who has had a jar of 

 these yellow daisies standing on a polished table indoors, and 

 tried to keep its surface free from a ring of golden dust around the 

 flowers, knows how abundant their pollen is. There are those 

 who vainly imagine that the slaughter of dozens of English spar- 

 rows occasionally is going to save this land of liberty from being 

 overrun with millions of the hardy little gamins that have proved 

 themselves so fit in the struggle for survival. As vainly may 

 farmers try to exterminate a composite that has once taken pos- 

 session of their fields. 



Blazing hot sunny fields, in which black-eyed Susan feels 

 most comfortable, suit the Tall or Green-headed Cone-flower or 

 Thimble-weed (JR.. laciniata) not at all. Its preference is for 

 moist thickets such as border swamps and meadow runnels. 

 Consequently it has no need of the bristly-hairy coat that screens 



355 



