Plant · P-1072

Cowpen Daisy

Verbesina encelioides

Cowpen daisy is a fast-growing annual wildflower that colonizes disturbed, overgrazed or manured ground, covering itself in yellow, three-toothed blooms from spring into fall. Bees and butterflies work the long bloom season hard, and a fresh stand is itself a sign that the ground underneath was recently broken, grazed hard or fouled by stock. The foliage carries a strong, unpleasant smell, and eaten in quantity the plant has proven fatal to sheep, so it is worth keeping off ground that stock actually graze. It lives one season, spreading only by seed, and dies back on its own once that seed is set.