Helenium amarum(Raf.) H.Rock

Bitterweed

WFO wfo-0000075426 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Helenium amarum, photographed by Joseph Aubert
fig. a Joseph Aubert, CC BY 4.0 / 2022-06-04 / obs. 204557941
Helenium amarum, photographed by Joseph Aubert
fig. b Joseph Aubert, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 189059411
Helenium amarum, photographed by Joseph Aubert
fig. c Joseph Aubert, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 191222930
Helenium amarum, photographed by ALLIE BORGMEYER
fig. d ALLIE BORGMEYER, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 194793864
Helenium amarum, photographed by Raven Dandridge
fig. e Raven Dandridge, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 202815183
Helenium amarum, photographed by johnyochum
fig. f johnyochum, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 190997863
Helenium amarum, photographed by Leila Dasher
fig. g Leila Dasher, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 176170955
Helenium amarum, photographed by Clifton Ladd, C.W.B.
fig. h Clifton Ladd, C.W.B., CC BY 4.0 / obs. 173908027

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 1,805 observations

Peak flowering in Aug, from 1,805 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 5 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Gaillardia amara Raf.
  • Heleniastrum tenuifolium (Nutt.) Kuntze
  • Helenium badium (A.Gray) Greene
  • Helenium tenuifolium Nutt.
  • Helenium tenuifolium var. tenuifolium

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.