Summary ⁶

Ratibida columnifera, commonly known as upright prairie coneflower or Mexican hat, is a species of flowering plant in the daisy family, Asteraceae, that is native to much of North America. It inhabits prairies, plains, roadsides, and disturbed areas from southern Canada through most of the United States to northern Mexico.

Description ⁷

General: Composite Family (Asteraceae). Prairie coneflower is a native perennial about a foot and a half tall. The rays are generally three to five centimeters long, much longer than the disk (solid part between the rays). The floral disk is somewhat globe-shaped, ovoid, or shortly ellipsoid, twelve to twenty millimeters high (Steyermark 1963). Prairie coneflower has well-developed leaves up to fifteen centimeters long and six centimeters wide, pinnatifid to partly bipinnatifid, with ultimate segments linear to oblong, often very unequal (Great Plains Flora Association 1986). This species has one to several stems twelve to forty-seven inches tall. The fruit is a small ashen.

Distribution: Prairie coneflower ranges from Alberta to Mexico, east to Manitoba, Minnesota, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas; and New England (Steyermark 1963). For current distribution, please consult the Plant profile page for this species on the PLANTS Web site.

Sources and Credits

1. (c) daryl_mitchell, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), https://www.flickr.com/photos/daryl_mitchell/16366309599/
2. (c) Leslie Kirkland, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-ND), https://www.flickr.com/photos/mybelle48/514960550/
3. (c) Josh Kellogg, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-ND), https://www.flickr.com/photos/kelloggphotography/3752918474/
4. (c) Mary, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Mary
5. (c) Elizabeth Rosenauer, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Elizabeth Rosenauer
6. Adapted by Amber Leung from a work by (c) Wikipedia, some rights reserved (CC BY-SA), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ratibida_columnifera
7. Public Domain, http://eol.org/data_objects/1392793

More Info

• iNat taxon page
• Biodiversity Heritage Library
• BOLD Systems BIN search
• Calflora
• CalPhotos
• eFloras.org
• Flora of North America (beta)
• Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF)
• Go Botany
• HOSTS - a Database of the World's Lepidopteran Hostplants
• IPNI (with links to POWO, WFO, and BHL)
• Jepson eFlora
• Maryland Biodiversity Project
• NatureServe Explorer 2.0
• NBN Atlas
• OregonFlora.org
• SEINet Symbiota portals
• Tropicos
• USDA PLANTS database
• VASCAN by Canadensys
• World Flora Online

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