[Illustration: COMMON SUNFLOWER (H. ANNUUS) SHOWING HABIT OF GROWTH.]
_H. Lætiflorus._--Under this name we grow in England a tall, much-branched, late flowering kind, with smooth and very stout and stiff stalks, sometimes black, sometimes green. It increases at the base of the stalks; it makes close growth, and shows little disposition to run at the root. The flowers are rather small, not more than 9 inches across, but so durable and so well displayed by the numerous spreading branches as to make the plant very useful for late decoration. I own that I cannot identify this plant with the lætiflorus of Asa Gray, which he tells us resembles tall forms of H. rigidus, with rough stalks, and bears flowers with numerous rays 1½ inches long.
[Illustration: FLOWER OF HELIANTHUS ANNUUS.]
_H. occidentalis._--Recently introduced by Mr. W. Thompson, of Ipswich, who gave me the plant two years ago. It is a neat species, growing about 2 feet high, well branched, and producing at the end of July abundance of flowers about 2 inches across. The lower leaves are small and broad, with long stalks, ovate in form.
[Illustration: HELIANTHUS MULTIFLORUS FL-PL.]
_H. mollis_, so called from the soft white down with which the leaves are covered, grows about 4 feet high. Leaves large, ovate, and sessile; growth of the plant upright, with hardly any branches; flowers pale yellow, about 3 inches across, not very ornamental. Cultivated at Kew, whence I had it.
_H. giganteus_ grows 10 feet high; stem much branched and disposed to curve. Flowers about 2½ inches across, produced abundantly in August; rays narrow and pointed, cupped, with the ends turning outward; leaves lanceolate and sessile; rootstock creeping, forming tuberous thickenings at the base of the stems, which Asa Gray tells us were "the Indian potato of the Assiniboine tribe," mentioned by Douglas, who called the plant H. tuberosus.
[Illustration: FULL SIZED FLOWER OF HELIANTHUS MULTIFLORUS.]
_H. maximiliani._--Half the height of the last, which it resembles, but the stem is stouter, the leaves larger, as are also the flowers, which are produced later. It is not so floriferous and ornamental as the last.
_H. lævigatus._--Smooth stalked, very distinct, does not spread at the roots, which are composed of finer fibers than those of most of the genus; stalks slender and black, growing closely together, branched near the summit, 5 feet high; leaves narrowly lanceolate and acute; flowers plentiful and about 2 inches across; rays few, and disk small.