Heliopsis helianthoides (false sunflower)

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Heliopsis helianthoides, photographed by Judson Collins — fig. a Judson Collins, CC0 1.0 / 2021-10-24 / obs. 165456827

Heliopsis helianthoides, photographed by Ivan Wiljanen — fig. b Ivan Wiljanen, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 159499169

Heliopsis helianthoides, photographed by Tom Lazar — fig. c Tom Lazar, CC0 1.0 / obs. 163720020

Heliopsis helianthoides, photographed by Michael J. Papay — fig. e Michael J. Papay, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 161676280

Heliopsis helianthoides, photographed by Rae Bosley — fig. f Rae Bosley, CC0 1.0 / obs. 159429775

Heliopsis helianthoides, photographed by caryaovata — fig. g caryaovata, CC0 1.0 / obs. 156973577

Heliopsis helianthoides, photographed by Mary Krieger — fig. h Mary Krieger, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 158548567

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.

Rudbeckia laciniatacalled this one 3x compare

Flowering n = 3,420 observations

562

1275

970

439

128

Flowering observations of Heliopsis helianthoides by month
Month	Observations
Jan	0
Feb	0
Mar	0
Apr	3
May	26
Jun	562
Jul	1275
Aug	970
Sep	439
Oct	128
Nov	16
Dec	1

Peak flowering in Jul, from 3,420 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 15 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.

Acmella flavicaulis Raf.
Acmella nudicaulis Raf.
Acmella parvifolia Raf.
Buphthalmum helianthoides L.
Buphthalmum melissoides Poir.
Heliopsis helianthoides subsp. occidentalis T.R.Fisher
Heliopsis helianthoides var. helianthoides
Heliopsis helianthoides var. scabra (Dunal) Fernald
Heliopsis helianthoides var. solidaginoides (L.) Fernald
Heliopsis laevis var. scabra (Dunal) Torr. & A.Gray
Heliopsis oppositifolia (L.) Druce
Heliopsis scabra Dunal
Heliopsis scabra var. scabra
Rudbeckia oppositifolia L.
Silphium solidaginoides L.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
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.