This provides a vibrant mix of orange and sunshine-yellow daisies, tempered by warm-brown centres, from June until October. Every striped flower differs slightly in pattern and colour and appears to shimmer in the border, outshining other drabber heleniums.
There are about 40 species of helenium in North and Central America. 'Sahin's Early Flowerer' is probably a hybrid of varieties bred from two of them, H. autumnale and H. bigelovii.
The former is a tall plant (4ft-6ft/1.2m-1.8m), which grows widely, from Quebec to Florida and from British Columbia to Arizona, in damp places. It is known as common sneezeweed because the Cherokee Indians used to make the dried flowers into a herbal snuff as a cure for colds and catarrh. H. bigelovii is a shorter, deep-yellow species found growing in wet places on pine forest slopes from California to Oregon.
Heleniums for all colour palettes
Although many helenium varieties are the work of breeders such as Karl Foerster and Alan Bloom, spontaneous crosses do occur. 'Sahin's Early Flowerer' was found as a seedling in a bed containing a seed mixture called 'Autumn Leaves' at the Sahin trial grounds in Zeeland, Holland.
My favourite Helenium is H. 'Wydney' for its unquestioned flower period and disease resistance
Other varieties worth considering for their long flower periods are:
- El Dorado
- Waltraut
- Rauchtopas
- Moerheim Beauty
Partners to plant alongside Heleniums are as follows:
- Echinacea
- Salvia's e.g. Salvia Caradonna
- Hemerocallis
- Geums
- Monarda
- Papaver
