Rudbeckia fulgidaAiton

orange coneflower

WFO wfo-0000014241 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC BY

Plate 1 figs. a–h · 8 separate observations

Rudbeckia fulgida, photographed by Gordon C. Snelling
fig. a Gordon C. Snelling, CC BY 4.0 / 2021-10-30 / obs. 167475836
Rudbeckia fulgida, photographed by the swamp ass
fig. b the swamp ass, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 150807139
Rudbeckia fulgida, photographed by Healthy Yards
fig. c Healthy Yards, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 144206965
Rudbeckia fulgida, photographed by Ryan Sorrells
fig. d Ryan Sorrells, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 142052665
Rudbeckia fulgida, photographed by Ashwin Srinivasan
fig. e Ashwin Srinivasan, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 49201140
Rudbeckia fulgida, photographed by Andrew Sebastian
fig. f Andrew Sebastian, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 164042158
Rudbeckia fulgida, photographed by Julie Hengenius
fig. g Julie Hengenius, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 155176069
Rudbeckia fulgida, photographed by Sean Rigney
fig. h Sean Rigney, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 153571913

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.

The specimen a real sheet, in a real collection

Herbarium
The New York Botanical Garden
Accession
1579703
Filed as
Rudbeckia fulgida Aiton
Det. by
J. J. N. Campbell 2012-01-01
Collected
Collector unspecified 1897-08-17
Origin
US
The sheet
View the digitised specimen (CC BY 4.0)

A real pressed plant, in a real collection, under the accession number above. Not an illustration of one. The holding institution does not serve this sheet’s image to third parties, so there is no photograph here. The record is real and the link goes to it. Where we hold no openly licensed sheet for a species this section is simply absent, and where a sheet never recorded who determined it, that field stays empty rather than being filled in. Roughly half of all herbarium sheets never recorded a determiner, which is ordinary.

Native range 28 botanical countries

Regions where Rudbeckia fulgida is native: Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Ontario, Pennsylvania, Québec, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin AlabamaArkansasConnecticutFloridaGeorgiaIllinoisIndianaKentuckyMarylandMassachusettsMichiganMississippiMissouriNew JerseyNew YorkNorth CarolinaOhioOklahomaOntarioPennsylvaniaQuébecSouth CarolinaTennesseeTexasVirginiaWest VirginiaWisconsin Delaware
Native distribution of Rudbeckia fulgida, after Kew’s World Checklist of Vascular Plants. Introduced, extinct and doubtful records are excluded, so this is where the plant is from, not everywhere it now grows. Regions too small to draw at this scale are marked with a dot.
RegionTDWG codeContinent
Alabama ALA NORTHERN AMERICA
Arkansas ARK
Connecticut CNT
Delaware DEL
Florida FLA
Georgia GEO
Illinois ILL
Indiana INI
Kentucky KTY
Maryland MRY
Massachusetts MAS
Michigan MIC
Mississippi MSI
Missouri MSO
New Jersey NWJ
New York NWY
North Carolina NCA
Ohio OHI
Oklahoma OKL
Ontario ONT
Pennsylvania PEN
Québec QUE
South Carolina SCA
Tennessee TEN
Texas TEX
Virginia VRG
West Virginia WVA
Wisconsin WIS

Region boundaries approximated from Natural Earth (public domain) and mapped to TDWG World Geographical Scheme for Recording Plant Distributions (WGSRPD) level-3 botanical countries (Brummitt 2001). Indicative, not the official WGSRPD geometry.

Flowering 590 in flower of 668 examined

Peak flowering in Aug. Each bar is the share of Rudbeckia fulgida observations in which someone actually recorded the reproductive state and found the plant in flower, not the raw number of flowering records. That distinction matters: people observe plants far more in spring than in winter, so a bare count of flowering records partly measures when people go outside. Dividing by the number examined removes that. 590 of 668 examined observations were in flower, every one of them research grade. The whisker on each bar is a 95% Wilson interval. 5 months have fewer than 5 examined observations, so no proportion is drawn for them. This is still a global aggregate and not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres. Where a species has fewer than 30 flowering records we do not draw this chart at all. Computed from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Where it actually grows measured, from 1,721 observations

Condition 5th percentile Median 95th percentile
Coldest month, mean daily low -12.7 °C -4.9 °C 1.7 °C
Warmest month, mean daily high 24.1 °C 28.1 °C 31.5 °C
Annual rainfall 868 mm 1,142 mm 1,432 mm
Rainfall in the driest quarter 128 mm 235 mm 302 mm

It is found where winters bring hard frost. This is not care advice and it is not a forecast. It is a measurement: we sampled the climate at every one of the 1,721 research-grade observations of Rudbeckia fulgida that carry a coordinate, and this is the range those places actually span. The 5th and 95th percentiles are used rather than the minimum and maximum, because a single cultivated specimen in a heated conservatory should not widen a tropical plant's range to the Arctic.

This is not a hardiness zone. A USDA zone is the average annual extreme minimum temperature. The figure above is the mean daily minimum of the coldest month, which is a different quantity and is typically far warmer. Reading one as the other would place a plant several zones too warm, so we do not publish a hardiness zone, because we do not have one. Climate from CHELSA V2.1 (Karger et al. 2017); occurrences from 10.15468/dl.cgje2x.

Also published as 24 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.

  • Centrocarpha chrysomela (Michx.) G.Don
  • Centrocarpha chrysomela D.Don
  • Centrocarpha discolor (Pursh) D.Don
  • Rudbeckia acuminata C.L.Boynton & Beadle
  • Rudbeckia chapmanii C.L.Boynton & Beadle
  • Rudbeckia chrysomela Michx.
  • Rudbeckia deamii S.F.Blake
  • Rudbeckia discolor Pursh
  • Rudbeckia discolor Elliott
  • Rudbeckia foliosa C.L.Boynton & Beadle
  • Rudbeckia fulgida Meehan
  • Rudbeckia fulgida var. speciosa (Wender.) Perdue
  • Rudbeckia neumanni Steud.
  • Rudbeckia neumannii hort. ex E.Vilm.
  • Rudbeckia newmanii Loudon
  • Rudbeckia palustris Eggert ex C.L.Boynton & Beadle
  • Rudbeckia scabra hort. ex E.Vilm.
  • Rudbeckia speciosa Wender.
  • Rudbeckia speciosa var. speciosa
  • Rudbeckia speciosa var. sullivantii (C.L.Boynton & Beadle) B.L.Rob.
  • Rudbeckia sullivantii C.L.Boynton & Beadle
  • Rudbeckia tenax C.L.Boynton & Beadle
  • Rudbeckia truncata Small
  • Rudbeckia umbrosa C.L.Boynton & Beadle

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.
  3. Wikidata. common name (P1843), joined on the World Flora Online identifier (P7715). CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-13.
  4. Kew, World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP v16). native distribution by TDWG level-3 botanical country, and life form. CC BY 3.0. Retrieved 2026-06-04.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice and no toxicity claim, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.