Rayless Sunflower

It has been a glorious weekend here in east Texas. For the first time in months our temperature dipped below 70F yesterday, and then Sunday morning, the thermometer registered 59F. I adore days like these where a chill hangs in the air.

The return of fall and the arrival of cooler temperatures and rain revitalizes the garden. After months of watching plants struggle, it is so nice to see them perking up and many fall performers beginning their show. One species that is becoming a favorite of mine for autumn is rayless sunflower.

I first saw it on Instagram a few years ago when Andrea England posted a picture of it in a shortgrass prairie in her suburban meadow. At first, I thought I was seeing just spent flowers and seedheads. However, after some sleuthing I realized that this photo was the rayless sunflower in bloom with its black licorice colored disks held on acid green stems. With a brief review of flower morphology, you can see where rayless sunflower gets its name. Many Asteraceae family members have a head inflorescence with two types of flowers, rays that comprised the outer row of colorful “petals” and the inner disks that form the bulk of the flower. The reason the flowers have their orb-like appearance is because they are largely absent of any rays.

The flowers of Helianthus radula emerge in autumn and are a wonderful companion to the ghostly colored Liatris elegans.

What a novelty in the plant world! I was intrigued. I contacted her offering to trade some seed, and soon I had an envelope ready to sow. Seeds germinated quickly, and I transplanted them into a sandy spot since they are native to the gulf coast. They have the most interesting foliage. For much of the growing season their orbicular leaves hugged the ground until the crowns began to elongate later in the summer. And, then out of nowhere these antennae-looking flowers pierced through the fray of grasses and forbs in my garden and attracted pollinators. I was delighted. And, the seedheads stood through wind and rain with very few bending over. Even into the winter, the seedheads were persistent until the spring mowing, although I will add a few were decimated by the birds as these frugivores foraged.

This year is the second that it has been growing in my garden, and there are even more flowers. I haven’t discerned yet if this plant is a reseeding annual or perennial, but either way it is delightful. I should know in the next few years. They are planted in a bed near our driveway, and I’ve noticed the shadows the circular flowers cast on the blacktop when the sun is at an angle in the sky. I really like to pair it with white flowers or those that have hints of white, and the strong texture pops with the more fine textured grasses.

One last note. Jenks Farmer argued that this plant needs a better name. I agree since rayless seems to hint that there is something lacking to this plant. Perhaps button sunflower or lollypop sunflower, something, really anything to better convey how wonderful this plant is.

A closeup of Helianthus radula flowers

I spy with my little eye, Spigelia

I shrieked as my truck came to a sudden stop.  

“What is it?!” Karen said after jumping out of her skin.    

“Spigelia marilandica!!!” I exclaimed.  

“I thought you had hit something in the road,” she said with a bit of consternation in her voice.  

I apologized.  It was just that I had never seen this incredible native in the wild!  

I spy with my little eye something red. Note the abnormal flower on the right with six yellow lobes. Most have five.

I pulled my truck off to the side of the broken back road and hopped out to walk over to the forest edge.  Camera trained on the flower, I snapped away in delight.  How lucky was I finding this ruby in the rough four miles from our house.  And, since it was early May 2018, a few weeks earlier or later and I might have missed this spectacle.  

Eventually, I got back up to walk to the truck.  I gazed down the road with the dark forest on the left and bright pasture on the right.  In the glare from the sun, I noticed a few more red flowers just down the lane and smiled in delight.  There were more than just this one! And, as my eye traced the road edge further, I began to make out hundreds of the little slivers of crimson that graced the north-facing forested slope.  My jaw dropped.  I had hit the Indian pink jackpot.  

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I got to know this wonderful wildflower better through my friend Jimmy Williams.  In a similar discovery as mine, he drove around all day in Henry County, Tennessee until he found a solitary flower growing in a roadside ditch.  He saved that plant from the mower blades and cultivated it into several clumps in his red border.  He has so many he was even able to share a plant with me that’s still back at my parent’s home in Tennessee.  

Spigelia marilandica in the foreground here provides color in Jimmy William’s red border in Paris, TN between the spring and summer flowering gap.

But, I was quite surprised to find it here in the wild in Texas.  I guess having never even seen it in situ I really didn’t know what its range or its habitat was.   

However, one thing I did know is that the plant wasn’t pink.  No, it seems to have been adorned with the same name as pinks or members of the Caryophyllaceae family that appear to have their petals clipped by pinking shears.  But, Spigelia isn’t even in the same family (it’s in Loganiaceae) or even order, and yet it has the same froufrou name.  Go figure. 

I liberated a few clumps from the roadside that day to take back to my house.  They were growing in gravel tailings, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before a grader would come along and do them in.   I planted them near our house because I was afraid that deer would come along and nibble them down.  I’ve since learned that’s probably not too big a concern due to the presence of toxic alkaloids in the leaves.  

Spigelia marilandica flowering just behind our house.

The next spring, I was delighted as my plants came back and bloomed heavier than any of the clumps I saw the previous year on that shaded hillside.  I chuckle now reading accounts about how this plant needs TLC, woodland edge, and moisture.   Mine are planted on a north facing slope in sandy fill soil and receive over half a day of full sun that burns other shade lovers I’ve tried in the same spot.  And, y’all, this is in Texas.  

One plant is lovely in bloom, but en masse the floral effect is spectacular.  I’ve notice over the years in large plantings at botanic gardens that there can be quite the range of colors in flowers from seed-derived plants, everything from a dark crimson to a light salmon. Even bloom time varies within a population.  My small grouping of six plants seemed to exhibit a range of genetics, too.  

How spectacular is this mass of Indian pink in Bell’s Woodland at Chanticleer in Wayne, Pennsylvania?

The variation in color in Spigelia marilandica is apparent in this seedling-derived population in a dry creek bed.

While most Spigelia marilandica vary in their color of red, this pink Indian pink in my garden is a testament to their color variation. Note this individual’s lack of red in the developing flowers on this cyme. I’m monitoring it because along with the lack of color there seems to be something off about the way the flowers open.

And, being planted near where I sit, I’ve enjoyed watching Ruby-throated Hummingbirds dart through the Indian pinks.  They and the flower have enjoyed a long dance of coevolution, the flower preferring the lead of the bird over the bee, evidenced by evolving the long, tubular red flowers.  Yes, I was quite happy with myself to see my transplants doing so well.  

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I gasp as I sped up a bit on the same broken back road.

“This is not good,” I said to Karen who was joining me on yet another backroads excursion.

On either side of the pavement there wasn’t a leaf to be found.  It was August 2019, and while the month can certainly be a scorcher, this blight was from herbicide.  

I pulled along side where my precious Spigelia had been blooming only months earlier.  The curtain of foliage that was there had been removed and I could see deeper into the woods than I ever had.  And, there wasn’t a single Spigelia plant on the roadside edge to be found.  I was crushed.  

It kills me when road crews blanket herbicide.  I understand keeping the right-of-ways in check, but what was so bad about this hillside that needed to be controlled?  Did I need to put a sign up that said, “Only known county record of Spigelia marilandica”?  I found myself thinking about how glad I was that I did move those six plants to my house, and I drove off anxious to see this population next spring.

This month, I revisited the site, and I’m happy to report that there are still Indian pink on the hillside.  In fact, after some snooping I’ve come to realize that the population is quite safe as there are hundreds on the slope further up from the road.  I guess with such a thick edge I wasn’t able to see the Spigelia for the forest.  And, somehow even a few plants remained on the road edge.  A few show a bit of herbicide residue from their curling leaves and stunted growth.  

I’m happy that this population of Spigelia marilandica is safe from roadside spraying. This snapshot is only a few of the hundreds of plants growing on the hillside.

But, this time I didn’t take any chances.  I rescued several clumps from the ditch that I had passed over previously, and they have since joined their brothers and sisters at my house.  Plants as good as this deserve to live and flourish without want or worry from county road maintenance.