Thin-leaf coneflower

Rudbeckia triloba, the brown-eyed Susan or thin-leaf coneflower, is a short-lived perennial or biennial herbaceous plant in the Asteraceae native to deciduous woodland edges, open prairies, and bottomland in the eastern and central United States. Plants form a basal rosette in the first year and in subsequent seasons produce one or several erect, much-branched, hispid stems 60 to 150 centimetres tall. The alternate stem leaves are coarsely toothed and variable, the lower often three-lobed (whence the epithet), the upper lanceolate to ovate and undivided; all are bristly and rough to the touch. The species produces many small composite heads in an open corymbose panicle, each head 3 to 5 centimetres across with 6 to 12 bright yellow ray florets surrounding a dark brown to purplish, hemispheric to ovoid disc of numerous tightly packed tubular florets. The fruit is a small four-angled cypsela without a conspicuous pappus.