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| Helianthus verticillatus Small at The Campbell Group, LLC, Coosa Valley Prairie in Floyd County, Georgia on Septebmer 17, 2003. |
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| Scientific name: Helianthus verticillatus Small
Common name: Whorled Sunflower Family: Asteraceae, Composite Legal status: Endangered in Georgia and in USA Flowering period: September-October Habitat: wet sandy soil Type locality: near Henderson, Chester County, Tennessee, August, 1892. | 
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Comments: In 1892, the species was first discovered by
Samuel McCutcheon Bain (1869-1919) a botanist from University of Tennessee. From the Bain's herbarium specimens, the species was first described by John Kunkel Small (1869-1938), a Curator of the New York Botanical Garden, in 1898.
In 1994, one hundred years later, another population's site was found,
but this time in Floyd County, Georgia on the Temple-Inland's Inc. property
by James R. Allison, a botanist from Georgia Natural Heritage Program, and by Richard T. Ware a local botanist from Rome. Description: "Perennial, deep green. Stems erect, 9-18 dm. tall, branching above, smooth and glabrous almost to the heads: leaves below the inflorescence in
whorls of 3's; blades firm, broadly linear or linear-lanceolate, 8-12 cm long, somewhat acuminate, entire, revolute, shagreen-like above,
sparsely pubescent beneath, nearly sessile or narrowed into short petioles: peduncles strigillose-hispidulous under the heads: heads showy: involucres campanulate-turbinate, barely 1 cm high: bracts narrowly linear-lanceolate, ciliolate, otherwise glabrous, somewhat spreading: rays
deep yellow, oblong, about 2 cm long: disks about 1.5 cm broad: disk-corollas 5 mm long
triangular-ovate: disk-bracts slightly keeled, pubescent and ciliate at the apex, prolonged
into 1-2 sharp teeth: achenes about 5 mm long. Helianthus verticillatus is related to
the Helianthus giganteus, but is easily distinguished by the smooth and glabrous stem,
the narrower entire smoother linear-lanceolate bracts of the involucres." -John K.Small, 1898.
Last updated on January 6, 2008. References: Botanical explorations in Floyd County, Georgia
© Copyright Zvezdana Ukropina-Crawford! 2003.-2007.,
In December 2002, Temple-Inland Inc. donated 929-acre in Coosa Valley Prairie to The Nature Conservancy.
In 2007 Coosa Valley Prairie came under ownership of The Campbell Group, LLC.
1.Small, John K. " Studies in the Botany of the Southeastern Unted States-XIV" Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club, Vol. 25, No. 9. (1898): 479
2. Matthews, James F., James R. Allison, Richard T. Ware, Sr., and Carl Nordman. " Helianthus verticillatus Small (Asteraceae) Rediscovered and Redescribed." Castanea 67(1) (2002) : 13-24
3. Images by Zvezdana Ukropina-Crawford
4. The New York Botanical Garden Vascular Plant Types Catalog: (http://www.nybg.org/bsci/hcol/vasc/ ), New York Botanical Garden,
200th Street and Kazimiroff Boulevard Bronx, NY 10458
List of plants collected by A.W. Chapman (1809-1899) in Floyd County, Georgia
floyd-flora.com, Rome, Georgia, U.S.A.