Native Plants

Q. Who is Mr. Smarty Plants?

A: There are those who suspect Wildflower Center volunteers are the culpable and capable culprits. Yet, others think staff members play some, albeit small, role. You can torture us with your plant questions, but we will never reveal the Green Guru's secret identity.

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Ask Mr. Smarty Plants

Ask Mr. Smarty Plants is a free service provided by the staff and volunteers at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.

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Please forgive us, but Mr. Smarty Plants has been overwhelmed by a flood of mail and must take a break for awhile to catch up. We hope to be accepting new questions again soon. Thank you!

Need help with plant identification, visit the plant identification page.

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Sunday - May 01, 2011

From: Sarahsville, OH
Region: Mid-Atlantic
Topic: Plant Identification
Title: Plant identification for West Virginia
Answered by: Nan Hampton

QUESTION:

Looking for the name of a wild flower in West Virginia, small golden colored petals..resembles a daisy.

ANSWER:

You have just described one of many possible yellow daisy-like flowers growing in West Virginia. You can try to find it by doing a search in our Native Plants Database. The plant you describe resembling a daisy would be a member of the Family Asteraceae (Aster Family) so you should choose 'Asteraceae (Aster Family)' from Family under "Search native plant database:" This will give you more than 1000 species. You will then NARROW YOUR SEARCH by choosing 'West Virginia' under Select State or Provence and "yellow" and possibly "orange" under BLOOM COLOR. This will narrow the list to around 500 species. You can then look through those to try and find your plant. You can also use any other of the applicable features to narrow the results still further.