Purple-headed Sneezeweed (Helenium flexuosum)
- Family: Aster (Asteraceae)
- Flowering: May-August.
- Field Marks: Helenium flexuosum is distinguished by its yellow heads with a purple center and its winged stems.
- Habitat: Roadside ditches, wet meadows, fallow fields.
- Habit: Perennial herb with fibrous roots.
- Stems: Erect, branched or unbranched, smooth or hairy, winged, up to 3 feet tall.
- Leaves: Alternate and basal, simple, the basal elliptic, pointed at the tip, tapering to the base, usually sparsely toothed, smooth or hairy, up to 3 inches long, up to 1 inch broad; the stem leaves similar but smaller.
- Flowers: Many crowded into a head with several heads per plant, each head up to 2 inches across, subtended by narrow, pointed, hairy bracts; the outer flowers yellow and ray-like, often pointing downward; the inner flowers purple, tubular, forming a round disk up to 1/2 inch across.
- Sepals: 0.
- Petals: Some yellow, 3-notched at the tip, ray-like, 15-25 in number; others purple, 5, united to form a short tube.
- Stamens: 5.
- Pistils: Ovary inferior, hairy.
- Fruits: Achenes hairy, with a few scale-like teeth at the tip.
- Notes: The achenes are eaten by wildlife.
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