Sawtooth Sunflower (Helianthus grosseserratus) is found from Maine to Ontario to Missouri and Texas. The leaves can be up to eight inches long and are less than one inch wide. The lower ones can have large teeth.

This sawtooth sunflower (H. grosseserratus) is difficult to separate from the pale leaf sunflower (H. strumosa). Both are large plants, and both have a stem that typically shows a white bloom. We have found them growing together in Stern's Woods in McHenry County Illinois. The H. strumosa shows 5-15 rather wide yellow rays, while H. grosseserratus shows 10-20 more narrow yellow rays. The leaf base of H. strumosa is truncate, and the leaf base of H. grosseserratus tapers into the stem. H. strumosa grows to about 7 feet tall, while H. grosseserratus can reach 10 feet in height.

Helianthus genus (true sunflowers) is a New World genus with about 70 species of which 51 are listed by Kartesz in greater North America, including the United States, Canada, Hawaii, Greenland, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. He lists an additional 14 named hybrids and also 19 named subspecies.

The typical sunflower flower head has yellow rays with a yellow, brown or purple disk in the center. Most of the species have large showy flower heads. The actual flowers are tiny and they are placed on the disk. The showy yellow rays surround the disk, and are not part of the true flowers. Many species are found in open prairies. In temperate North America many of the species bloom in late summer or in the fall. Many of the species grow to a height of over four feet, with some species reaching heights of six feet or more. (The domesticated sunflower can be up to 15 feet tall!) The beginning botanist is alerted that species in the Silphium and Heliopsis genera have many visual characteristics in common with true sunflowers. The Rudbeckia, Ratibida, and Coreopsis genera also share many sunflower characteristics.

We have taken the Kartesz list or North American species, and have made entries for each species. We have then tracked most of them to their geographical origin.

Sunflower Tribe (Heliantheae) is a large tribe that contains the sunflowers, tickseeds, and ragweeds. Brown and Britton separates the ragweeds from this group, raising them to a family status.

Composite or Daisy or Aster Family (Compositae or Asteraceae) is a huge family of perhaps over 20,000 species. Sometimes the Chicory portion of this family is treated as a separate family. Here the Chicory group is treated as the most advanced tribe in the Composite Family. (The tribes are as suggested by Lawrence in his book, Taxonomy of Vascular Plants.)

Many species of this family are characterized by large flower heads composed of many very small flowers and leaves that appear as petals (bracts). These cause the large flower heads to appear as a single large flower. The center of the "flower" of a common sunflower contains a multitude of tiny flowers.

To facilitate study of this large and complicated family, the Composites are usually broken down into different tribes:

1 Vernoninae - Ironweeds
2 Eupatorieae - Bonesets, Joe-Pye Weeds
3 Astereae - Asters and Goldenrods, etc.
4 Inuleae - Inula, Elecampane, Pussytoes
5 Heliantheae - Sunflowers, etc.
6 Helenieae - Sneezeweeds
7 Anthemideae - Camomile, Yarrow
8 Senecioneae - Ragwort, Senecio
9 Calenduleae - Calendula, Most Old World
11 Cynareae - Thistles, Burdock
13 Cichoriacea - Dandelions

There are over 20,000 species arranged in about 1,300 genera in this family.
As of 1994, there were about 2,700 species in almost 400 genera either native to or established in greater North America, including Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Hawaii, and Greenland.


Campanulate is a large order usually divided into six different families. The largest of these is the Aster (Composite) Family.

There have been considerable proposed changes to this order. The first change is renaming this to the Asterales order. The second change is including several other families herein. (for example, the Menyanthaceae). The composite (Asteraceae) and bell flower (Campanulaceae) families remain.

Dicots (Dicotyledoneae Class) are the predominant group of vascular plants on earth. With the exception of the grasses (Monocots) and the Conifers (Gymnosperms), most of the larger plants that one encounters are Dicots. Dicots are characterized by having a seed with two outer shell coverings.

Some of the more primitive Dicots are the typical hardwood trees (oaks, birches, hickories, etc). The more advanced Dicots include many of the Composite (Aster) Family flowers like the Dandelion, Aster, Thistles, and Sunflowers. Although many Monocots reach a very high degree of specialization, most botanists feel that the Dicots represent the most advanced group of plants.

Seed plants (Phylum Embryophyta) are generally grouped into one large phylum containing three major classes: the Gymnosperms, the Monocots, and the Dicots. (Some scientists separate the Gymnosperms into a separate phylum and refer to the remaining plants as flowering plants or Angiospermae.)

For North American counts of the number of species in each genus and family, the primary reference has been John T. Kartesz, author of A Synonymized Checklist of the Vascular Flora of the United States, Canada, and Greenland (1994). The geographical scope of his lists include, as part of greater North America, Hawaii, Alaska, Greenland, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.

Kartesz lists 21,757 species of vascular plants comprising the ferns, gymnosperms and flowering plants as being found in greater North America (including Alaska, Hawaii, Greenland, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

There are estimates within the scientific world that about half of the listed North American seed plants were originally native with the balance being comprised of Eurasian and tropical plants that have become established.

Plant kingdom contains a large variety of different organisms including mosses, ferns, and seed plants. Most plants manufacture their energy from sunlight and water. Identification of many species is difficult in that most individual plants have characteristics that have variables based on soil moisture, soil chemistry, and sunlight.

Because of the difficulty in learning and identifying different plant groups, specialists have emerged that study only a limited group of plants. These specialists revise the taxonomy and give us detailed descriptions and ranges of the various species. Their results are published in technical journals and written with highly specialized words that apply to a specific group.

On the other hand, there are the nature publishers. These people and companies undertake the challenging task of trying to provide easy to use pictures and descriptions to identify those species.

NEW SEARCH