Plant Wiki

The open plant encyclopedia

Know any plant.
Grow it well.

Snap a photo or search by any name to see how to care for it, where it comes from, whether it's safe, and a 3D model you can turn.

  • 13,000+plants with full pages
  • 365,000+plant species worldwide
  • 220+countries covered

Common in

See all

The plants people record most in your country, and ones that grow there wild.

What do you want to do?

Popular plants

Browse all plants

See them in 3D

All plants in 3D

Browse plants

Filter by what you want to do, shape, origin, country, care and safety.

Plant Wiki › Browse plants

Serpentine Sunflower

Helianthus exilis

Serpentine Sunflower
Photo: (c) joergmlpts, some rights reserved (CC BY), CC BY 4.0
Family
Asteraceae (Daisy family)
Grows as
Annual
Native range
California

About

Helianthus exilis is a species of sunflower known by the common name serpentine sunflower. It is endemic to northern California (from Siskiyou County south to Napa County, Nevada County, and Santa Clara County), where it grows mainly in mountainous areas, often in serpentine soils.

Helianthus exilis is an erect annual reaching heights over a meter (40 inches)). It has a hairy, rough stem with leaves lance- or oval-shaped, usually pointed, sometimes serrated along the edges, and 3 to 15 centimeters (1.2-6.0 inches) long. The inflorescence holds one or more flower heads, and each plant may have many inflorescences growing along the full length of the stem. The flower head has a cup of long, pointed phyllaries holding an array of bright yellow ray florets each one to two centimeters (0.4-0.8 inches) long around a center of yellow to dark purple or reddish disc florets.

Other Helianthus plants

Southeastern sunflower · Helianthus ambiguus · Swamp sunflower · Common sunflower · Western sunflower · Silverleaf sunflower · Arizona sunflower · Purpledisk sunflower · Serpentine sunflower · Helianthus brevifolius · California sunflower · Lakeside sunflower

Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Helianthus exilis by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts are shared under the same licence.

Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.

Credits & terms

Identify a plant

Point at a leaf or flower and snap. One plant in frame works best.

Your photo
Starting camera…