Verbesina encelioides ( ) ( )

Asteraceae

• This long season annual has triangular, toothed leaves that are grayish-green in color and fetid in odor. Cronwbeard's ray flowers are a gorgeous yellow-orange, each three-notched at its end. The disk flowers are yellow, and are followed by flattened seeds covered with fine, gray-brown hairs, hence the name crownbeard. This plant colonizes disturbed roadsides and abandoned fields, from deserts clear into pines. One set of these plants germinates early, to flower between March and July. Another, large crop, germinates with the late summer rains and flowers between July through December. "Arizona Highways Presents Desert Wildflowers, 1988"