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Venegasia carpesioides (Canyon Sunflower) - A large well branched dense fast growing semi-evergreen subshrub 3 to 5 feet tall by as wide with 4 to 6 inch long 3 veined deltoid bright green irregularly toothed leaves that are fuzzy on the underside and drought deciduous, emerging anew with winter rains. In late winter and spring, and often through summer into fall when irrigated, appear the solitary two inch wide yellow composite flowers that arise as terminal stems or from the axils of the upper leaves with 12 to 21 bright yellow ray flowers and many slightly darker disk flowers in the center.
Grows in full sun along coast but often looks its best in bright shade or morning sun and this is a requirement when grown in interior gardens. Soils should be moderately well drained, though can be clay if on a slope and kept relatively moist, at least during spring and for prolonged tidy foliage in summer but is also drought tolerant as a semi-deciduous plant. Reliably cold hardy to 25° F and will resprout after cold temperatures at least to as low as 20° F. A great cheery native plant that has been compared to looking like a bush full of small dahlias. It is attractive to butterflies, bees and hummingbirds and is a great plant out along the drip line of oaks planted with such other native plants as Salvia spathacea, Ribes viburnifolium and Heuchera.
Canyon sunflower is native to shaded moist canyons and wooded slopes and along streambanks in Coastal Sage Scrub, Chaparral, Southern Oak Woodland plant communities in California from Monterey County south into Baja California below 3,000 feet in elevation. The name for this monotypic genus honors Mexican historian Miguel Venegas (1680–1764), who was a Jesuit administrator and historian who wrote geographical, historical, and ethnographic descriptions of Baja California though it was a region that he never personally visited. The specific epithet in reference to the similarity of the flower heads to those of Carpesium another plant in the Aster family. Our plants that we sold from 2014 through 2018 were grown from a collection made of a particularly dense flowering plant noted along Rufugio Road in the Santa Ynez Mountains west of Santa Barbara.
Information displayed on this page about Venegasia carpesioides is based on our research conducted about this plant in our nursery library as well as from information provided by reliable online resources. We also include our own observations made about it as it has grown in the nursery gardens and other gardens visited, as well how the crops of this plant performed in the containers in our nursery field. We will also include comments received from others and welcome hearing from anyone who has information about this plant, particularly if it includes cultural information aiding others to better grow it.
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