This week... Rudbeckia hirta

Tips on growing plants also known as yellow coneflowers or black-eyed Susans

- GRAHAM RICE

THE name coneflower gives it away. Each flower is like a large upward-facing daisy with a ring of narrow petals surrounding a striking cone-shaped eye that can be very dark, giving it the common name of black-eyed Susan, or honey-coloured or gold. Individual flowering stems carry one, or perhaps a few, flowers and are held upright emerging through mounds of rough dark-green leaves.

Perennials and annuals

Coneflowers come in hardy perennial types and they also come as annuals (sometimes known as gloriosa daisies). These summer and autumn-blooming flowers are usually yellow, although redflowered varieties are now available along with a variety of mahogany, chestnut and russet shades. Some have fully double flowers made up of a large number of petals that hide the cone.

These are all, scientifically speaking, rudbeckia. But there is also another group of hardy perennial flowers that are also known as coneflowers, although these are, scientifically speaking, echinacea and come mostly in purplish, red and pink shades. Here, I'm discussing rudbeckias.

Two kinds of conefloweer

THERE are two kinds of coneflower: hardy perennial coneflowers and annual coneflowers.

Perennial coneflowers, or black-eyed Susans, are exceptionally frost-hardy plants that reach anything from 16in (40cm) to 8ft (2.4m) in height, depending on the variety, but most come at the more manageable end of the range.

Their yellow daisies come in a range of shades from lemon-yellow to deep-gold or almost orange, sometimes in two shades, and there are even a few with no petals at all but which feature large, dark, almost black cones. A few have many petals that create double flowers. Perennial coneflowers are usually bought as plants.