AUTUMN PERENNIAL FLOWERS 79 



Each plant forms a dense mass of new shoots for division, 

 but as it is not surely hardy, one clump should be taken 

 into a greenhouse or the cellar and kept alive with sufficient 

 moisture until spring. The October Sunflower {Helianthus 

 maximiliana) forms a sturdy four-foot clump of pleasing 

 foliage, and has the merit of blooming with the chrysanthe- 

 mum. A few short-stemmed flowers of rich yellow cluster 

 at every end of its waving stalks, and meet with warm wel- 

 come at a time when other plants are yielding to frosts and 

 dying down. 



The Tall Sneezewort (Helenium autumnale superbum) gives 

 a great mass of bloom in September. The separate flowers, 

 peculiar in the drooping attitude of their bright yellow rays, 

 are borne in broad-spreading panicles at the top of each stout 

 stalk. A closely related variety of like habit {Helenium 

 grandicephalum striatum) has petals streaked with red. In 

 the spring a ring of eight or a dozen budding tufts of leaves 

 rises closely about every old decayed stalk. Thus the plant 

 is the opposite of weedy in habit, yet is most readily divided, 

 since nature performs this task skilfully herself. It often 

 scatters self-sown seedlings about the garden also, which are 

 easily disposed of with the hoe, or which may readily be 

 transplanted to the home gardens of the children. It is 

 characteristic of several of these plants that after appearing 

 in one home garden of a community, in a few years they 

 may be noted forming strong masses of color in the yards of 

 many neighboring homes. 



When school opens the boltonia or false chamomile also 

 spreads its broad masses of daisy-like flowers, surmounting 

 every stalk. Like the heleniums, it gives crowded clumps 

 of new shoots every spring, and is divided and multiplied 



