PlantFiles: Small Wood Sunflower, Small-headed Sunflower
Helianthus 'Lemon Queen'

Great plant! Ordered two last year from Roots and Rhizomes. They were cutting propagated and arrived in a 4-inch pot. Planted it in a "dryish" spot and watered it irregularly for the first few weeks. By August, they have reached 5 ft high and 2 ft wide with a profusion of blooms. No staking. Will try propagating it by stem cutting next year. It bloomed from August to October. I highly recommend it.

This is my favorite perennial sunflower of all the ones I've tried, and I've tried a bunch - I love sunflowers! I grew it with tremendous success on the east side of a fairly tall wood fence (a couple feet taller than this plant) in fairly dry soil with only occasional supplemental water. Mine never needed staking, didn't spread very much beyond the 3 ft. x 3 ft. clump it formed its first year, and was reliably smothered in blooms for at least a month, often more. Bees and butterflies LOVED the blooms. For some reason it's been very difficult to find this cultivar (or even the species!) in local nurseries in recent years, which I think is a real shame. This is a great plant to plant at the transition between a meadow area and a loosely canopied tree, doing better with partial shade than most sunflowers.

This vigorous growing plant does very well on the south wall of our house, although it needs staking when it gets a good supply of water. I have heard that if it gets less water, it will not require staking. Each year produces many more baby plants which I have transplanted today. We will see how difficult it is to transplant the babies. It is a beautiful, prolific flowering plant.

This plant spreads very rapidly. I had to move it from one flowerbed where it was to overcome the more subdued plants there and planted it next to the barn where it holds its own with other vigourous plants like Nepeta "Infinity', Hydrangea "Annabelle", various daylilies and asiatic lilies. It is a nice plant if you have a suitable spot for it.