Rudbeckia maxima

Rudbeckia maxima is the giant of the coneflowers, and grows nothing at all like a black-eyed Susan. From a bold basal rosette of huge, smooth, paddle-shaped leaves the color of blue-gray wax rise bare flower stems five to seven feet tall, each topped by a golden daisy whose drooping rays hang like a skirt beneath a strikingly tall, dark central cone. The effect, foliage and flower together, is pure architecture.

The great blue-gray leaves, up to two feet long and glaucous as a cabbage, give rise to one of the common names, cabbage-leaf coneflower, and are unusual enough to carry the garden long before the summer flowers arrive. The genus honors Olof Rudbeck, the Swedish botanist and teacher of Linnaeus, while maxima, the largest, needs no explaining once the plant is in full stride. Gardeners also know the species as the great coneflower or, fondly, as Dumbo's ears, for the outsized foliage.

A native of the south-central states, the great coneflower grows wild in the wet prairies and low ground of eastern Texas, western Louisiana, southwestern Arkansas, and southeastern Oklahoma, where the tall cones feed bees and butterflies in summer and goldfinches in fall as the seeds ripen. In the garden the plant makes a spectacular vertical accent for the back of a sunny border, a rain garden, a pond edge, or a bold prairie planting, the flower stems rising high above neighbors while the blue rosette holds the ground below. Set against fine grasses and hot-colored perennials, the silhouette is unforgettable.

Give Rudbeckia maxima full sun and a moist, fertile soil for the best growth, though the plant tolerates ordinary ground and periods of drought once the deep roots take hold. Leave the tall seed cones standing into winter for the finches and for the strong, dark silhouette, and cut the old stems in late winter as the blue leaves push up again. Few native perennials give so much drama from foliage and flower alike, and fewer still on so grand a scale.