Sneezeweed

A late-summer native for moist sites with yellow-orange flowers and prominent dark disk heads that stand out when the garden needs color most.

Purple-head Sneezeweed earns its surprising common name from a historic, now-discredited use: dried and powdered leaves were once used as snuff to induce sneezing as a folk remedy. The flowers are striking: drooping yellow petals around a prominent rounded purple-brown disk that gives the plant an almost cheerful, disheveled look entirely different from the neat composites of summer. The yellow-orange flowers deepen toward orange on the ray tips in full sun. It blooms in the gap between midsummer and fall when some gardens run short on color, and it does it on moist sites where few other natives perform as reliably. A great companion for cardinal flower and blue cardinal flower along rain garden margins. Butterflies work the disk flowers heavily and cut flowers are excellent: they last a week or more in a vase with minimal care.