Rudbeckia grandiflora
Rough Coneflower
- Type
- Perennial
- Hardiness
- USDA Zones 5–9
- Sun
- Full Sun
- Soil
- Well-drained, Moist
- Mature size
- Height 3–6 Feet · Spread 2–3 Feet
- Growth rate
- Moderate
- Seasonality
- Dies back, depends on zone
This variety is no actively in production in our propagation house and may not return to our catalogue. We maintain this page purely for reference and archival purposes. If you would like to grow this plant, tell us. Your interest helps guide what we bring back.
For a larger installation or commercial project, write hello@woodlanders.net.
Rudbeckia grandiflora is the tall, wild aristocrat of the coneflowers, sending stiff stems three to six feet high above a clump of coarse, sandpapery leaves to carry large golden daisies through the heat of high summer. The ray flowers droop back from a prominent, dark chocolate-brown central dome in the loose, unbuttoned way of the prairie species, giving the flower a windblown grace that the stiff garden hybrids have long since bred out.
A true North American native, the rough coneflower haunts the prairies, glades, and open woodlands of the south-central states, from Texas and Oklahoma east across the lower Midwest, with a curious outlying population in northwest Georgia. The genus honors the Swedish botanists Olof Rudbeck, father and son, teachers of Linnaeus himself, while grandiflora, large-flowered, marks the generous size of the bloom. Older gardeners will know the coneflowers as the wild cousins of the black-eyed Susan, and this species as one of the boldest of the clan.
Coneflowers have long served the prairie both as pollinator fuel and as winter bird food, the summer daisies feeding bees and butterflies and the standing seed heads carrying finches through the cold months. In the garden, Rudbeckia grandiflora belongs in a meadow, a prairie planting, a pollinator border, or the sunny back of a mixed bed, where the tall stems can rise among grasses and other natives. The plant spreads slowly by rhizome into a generous colony, so give room, and pair with little bluestem, blazing star, and asters for a planting that reads as a piece of open country.
Tough and adaptable, the rough coneflower takes heat, humidity, drought once established, and a wide range of soils in stride, from ordinary garden loam to the damp edge of a bog, asking only for full sun and room to stand. Leave the seed heads through winter for the birds and for the sculptural silhouette, then cut the old stems in late winter as the new growth rises. A native worth growing for the pollinators, the goldfinches, and the honest prairie character all at once.
Yellow drooping rays, dark brown central cone, mid to late summer