Audubon® Native Gray-headed Coneflower

A slice of the prairie in your backyard! Gray-Headed Coneflower captures the spirit of the prairie in its bold, beautiful flowers. In midsummer, its strong stems rise to five feet, topped by buttery yellow blooms. The petals surround a pale gray cone, which becomes chocolatey brown as the blossoms age. The color change is a cue to Goldfinches to come and harvest the seeds. You’ll enjoy watching the nimble birds balance on the swaying seedheads as they dig in. Gray-Headed Coneflower is easy to grow and is perfect for backyard bird habitat, meadows, native gardens, cut flower gardens, and children’s gardens.

Gray-Headed Coneflower, also known as Yellow Coneflower, is native to much of the eastern U.S., though it is most prevalent in the Midwest. A relic of the vast, majestic prairies that once graced our country’s heartland, it now appears along roads and railroad tracks, in old fields, and in open woods. Beside being attractive to finches, Gray-Headed Coneflower is valuable to our native pollinators. Green metallic bees, leafcutter bees, cuckoo bees, and beneficial wasps, flies, skippers, and beetles visit the flowers. A lovely little orange and black butterfly called the silvery checkerspot also feeds on its foliage.

One fascinating insect that makes use of the Gray-Headed Coneflower is the wavy-lined emerald moth, which lays its eggs on the flowers. Known as the camouflaged looper in its immature state, the caterpillar, which is patterned like a pair of camo pants, disguises itself even further by actually detaching pieces of the flower and sticking them to its back! When it transforms into an adult, it becomes a beautiful lime-green moth.