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. Herbarium specimen: Specimen ID: NY 73465 / Lectotype at Herbarium of New York Botanical Garden (NY), New York, NY
	Helianthus verticillatus Small at The Campbell Group, LLC, Coosa Valley Prairie in Floyd County, Georgia on Septebmer 17, 2003.

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.
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.

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 May 2, 2011.

References:
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

Botanical explorations in Floyd County, Georgia
List of plants collected by A.W. Chapman (1809-1899) in Floyd County, Georgia