Helenium, Sneezeweed, Helen's Flower, Dogtooth Daisy 'Moerheim Beauty'

This is one of the best perennials for color in late summer and early fall, blooming for 8-10 weeks. It also makes an excellent cut flowe...Read Morer.

Flower color is a good warm dark red, fading to golden brown, a great relief from the gold daisies that often dominate late summer gardens. This cultivar is short for the species, at 3-4', but still sometimes needs some light support. Plants will grow shorter and bushier if cut back hard in early June, at the cost of delaying bloom by some weeks.

Deadheading can extend bloom and reduce self-sowing. This is not aggressive in its self-sowing, but the seedlings do not come true, and I've had a stand of 'Moorheim Beauty' eventually become gold-flowered like the species through self-sowing. Stems should be sheared back when bloom is finished.

Hybrid heleniums need full sun and consistently moist soil. It is a wet-soil plant in the wild, and it's noticeably less drought tolerant than most garden perennials. Performance is best where summer night temperatures usually drop below 70F.

Division is easy in early spring, before it puts on much top growth. Division in fall is usually fatal.

All sources agree that the pollen isn't allergenic, but they disagree about the origin of the genus name 'sneezeweed'. Some say that settlers dried and powdered parts of the plant for use as snuff, though they differ on what parts (flowers, leaves, or roots). Armitage says that it's because bloom coincides with ragweed pollen season.

Native Americans and settlers used Helenium medicinally. Poisonous to livestock.