Calliopsis

Coreopsis tinctoria, plains coreopsis or calliopsis, is a slender, glabrous annual in the Asteraceae native to much of central and southern North America, where it occupies prairies, roadsides, ditches, and disturbed open ground. It grows 30-120 cm tall on smooth, branching stems carrying opposite, deeply pinnately divided leaves with narrow, linear lobes. The conspicuous flower heads, 2-4 cm across, are borne on long, slender peduncles in loose corymbose clusters; each head bears 8 yellow ray florets boldly marked with a dark reddish-brown basal blotch surrounding a maroon disc of tubular florets. Two whorls of involucral bracts subtend the heads, the inner appressed and membranous-margined. Achenes are small, oblong, and dark, lacking the conspicuous pappus of many composites. Flowering occurs from early summer to autumn, and the species naturalises readily as a garden escape across much of the world.