An annual caulescent herb, with smooth and glaucous foliage, and alternate broad thickish. entire or slightly serrate, 1-ribbed, clasping leaves. Heads radiate, showy. Involucre flat, many-flowered, of few narrow, somewhat foliaceous bracts. Receptacle slender, with early deciduous chaffy scales. Ray-flowers few, neutral, the rays yellow or often brownish-purple at the base. Disk-flowers perfect, fertile, brownish, their corollas 5-lobed. Style-branches with small pubescent appendages. Achenes terete or nearly so, not angled, striate and minutely transversely wrinkled. Pappus wanting. [Greek, dragon-like, referring to the appendaged style-branches.]

A monotypic genus of the southeastern United States.

1. Dracopis Amplexicaulis (Vahl) Cass. Clasping-Leaved Cone-Flower

Fig. 4452

Rudbeckia amplexicaulis Vahl, Act. Havn. 2: 29. pl. 4.

1783. Dracopis amplexicaulis Cass.; DC. Prodr. 5: 558. 1836.

Annual; glabrous throughout, somewhat glaucous; stem branched, grooved, 1°-2° high, the branches ascending. Leaves entire or sparingly toothed, 1 -ribbed, reticulate-veined, the lower oblong to spatulate, sessile, the upper ovate, ovate-oblong, or lanceolate, acute, cordate-clasping; heads solitary at the ends of the branches, long-peduncled, about 2' broad; bracts of the involucre few, lanceolate, acuminate; rays yellow, or sometimes brown at the base; disk ovoid-oblong, often becoming 1' high; achenes not angled, obliquely attached to the elongated receptacle; chaff at length deciduous.

In wet soil, Missouri to Oklahoma, Louisiana and Texas. June-Aug.