Rudbeckia mohrii

Rudbeckia mohrii is a coneflower unlike any other, and the surprise is in the leaves. Where the rest of the clan spreads coarse, broad foliage, Mohr's coneflower sends up narrow, firm, grass-like blades, upright from the base, so that out of bloom the plant could be mistaken for a sedge or an iris. From this fountain of green rise slender, nearly leafless stems, two to four feet tall, each carrying three to ten bright yellow daisies with reddish-brown to dark purple centers from late spring well into fall.

A true rarity of the southeastern Coastal Plain, Mohr's coneflower grows wild in the wet pine flatwoods and savannas of south Georgia and north Florida, an obligate wetland plant that keeps to ground wet enough to defeat most garden perennials. The genus honors Olof Rudbeck, the Swedish teacher of Linnaeus, while the species remembers Charles Theodore Mohr, the German-born pharmacist and botanist whose great flora of Alabama recorded the plants of the Deep South. Few coneflowers are so local, or so seldom seen in cultivation.

In the wild the bright daisies feed the bees and butterflies of the flatwoods through a long summer season, and a nursery-grown plant carries that value into the garden while helping keep an uncommon native in cultivation. Grow Mohr's coneflower where the ground stays reliably moist: a rain garden, a pond or ditch edge, a bog bed, or a low, sunny spot that never bakes dry, drifted among pitcher plants, native grasses, and other wetland companions. The grassy foliage and tall, airy flower stems bring a fine, see-through texture that broader-leaved neighbors lack.

Give the plant full sun and wet to consistently moist, acid soil, and resist the urge to plant on dry ground, since this is a coneflower that genuinely wants wet feet. Leave the seed heads for the birds and the winter silhouette, then cut the old stems as the grassy new growth returns in spring. A graceful, unusual, and quietly threatened native for the gardener who has the damp ground to grow them.