Helenium Flammendes Katchen - Sneezeweed

The 'Flammendes Katchen' Helenium is an excellent variety of Helenium, both highly floriferous, beautifully coloured, and with a very good performance in flower beds. An additional asset for this robust perennial plant is its long and flamboyant summer flowering. Its head-like flowers, resembling daisies with widened petals, display different flaming tones of red, orange, copper, and yellow throughout the day, centered around a large heart that transitions from brown to golden yellow. The foliage, a beautiful dark green, complements the warm hue of the flowers. It is an easy plant to grow in the sun in any good, moisture-retaining garden soil. Its flowers are magnificent in a vase.

The natural species of Heleniums are perennials native to North America, usually found near swamps or in humid and sunny locations. The 'Flammendes Katchen' cultivar offers an extended summer flowering period, renewing from mid-July to late September if one takes care to regularly remove faded flowers, with a fiery colour and a strong resistance to inclement weather. The plant forms robust and ramified leafy stems, reaching about 1.20m (4ft) in height. The leaves, coloured a dark olive green, are lanceolate in shape with slightly dentate margins, and are arranged alternately along the stems. The flowers, organized in head-like clusters, bloom at the ends of the stems. Measuring 6cm (2in) across, these clusters are centered around a large cone coloured in brown, gradually giving way to stamens covered in yellow pollen. At the periphery, brightly coloured florets in vivid red and bordered in yellow fade into shades of orange, copper, and yellow. It is when they are bathed in sunlight that the colors of Heleniums are most astonishing. They have the advantage of not fading in the sun.

The 'Flammendes 'Katchen' Helenium is quite hardy and never gets sick. It thrives in ordinary soil but loves growing in sunny flower beds. Insensitive to heat as long as its roots can sink into cool soil, it is easy to grow and flowers just as well in slopes and flower beds as in containers on the terrace or balcony. Despite all these qualities, Heleniums remain rare in gardens. Perhaps because their warm tones herald the arrival of autumn. This Helenium pairs very well with summer blooms in yellow (Goldenrods), blue (Catmints, buglosses, perennial salvias, agastaches), as well as with asters and grasses. It can also be combined with plants with purple foliage (Physocarpus 'Little Devil', Berberis atropurpurea 'Nana', 'Black Lace' elderberry) or golden foliage (Spirea Goldmound).