I’ve noticed this guy growing along the gravely parts of the roads around town. It has spread to the front of my yard. My plant ID apps say it’s bitter sneezeweed (and Google says bitter sneezeweed grows 1-2ft) but it’s growing like a ground cover, not just in my yard but all over, even the less tended area. So is it bitter sneezeweed? Something else? Can I let it take over the world? Will it take over the world?
by Suspicious_Note1392
15 Comments
i feel like native plants would catch on faster with some rebranding
they’ve all got names like “scratchy brown itch weed” and cultivated plants are like “aurora sunburst dewflower”
It looks short, but it does look like helenium flowers to me.
Its called sneezeweed because it used to be dried and powdered into snuff to induce sneezing.
Aka yellowdicks🤘🏻
I’m gonna call them Cynthias cause they look like Angelica’s doll from Rugrats.
I suspect the individual who discovered it, tasted it and realized it was bitter. He was probably allergic too, hence the name.
Uneducated pioneer farmers who had recently moved to the region named a lot of our “weeds” – overwriting the historic Native American names for the plants that presumably better reflected their value.
Helenium looks like a child’s drawing of what they think a flower looks like
Hey, it made the botanist sneeze. Bitterly. Give him a break
A lot of European settlers named these plants as they are “weeds” to their native land and mono culture farming helped play a part into these bad “___weed” names
The gap between Clover broomrape/bastard flax and burning bush/tree of heaven needs to be studied. I had to look my grandma in the eye and say she needed to replace tree of heaven with speckled alder.
https://preview.redd.it/8qmtyueogmmf1.jpeg?width=1864&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d2094fc2a0483cd1f4d55626584f7eb58546eb84
I love my sneezeweed, and love to tell people the origins of its name. Right before I point them at my pussytoes.
Sneezeweed is actually named after its original use by native Americas as a snuff plant for sneezing out evil spirits. It was called “sneezing spasmodically” by Wisconsin natives. This is essentially the English version of its name. The weed part is obviously unfortunate, but I like the name sneeze. Maybe a good name would be Sneezing Helen flower.
European colonizers. They did come up with nice names every now and then. Tree of Heaven for example. 😇
Mustard weed
My old college campus planted these en masse as an annual bedding plant with the usual suspects (petunias, dwarf zinnias, etc). They looked great all summer and fall. I’m calling them annual helenium tho lol