Featured Plant

Below the towering tree daisies and tree dahlias of the Mesoamerican Cloud Forest grows another member of the Aster family – Bidens – much shorter in stature but quite striking with its delicate dark green leaves and brilliant golden flowers. It forms a one–two foot high mass around the edges of the Cloud Forest and was collected as seed by Dennis Breedlove and SFBGS Curator Don Mahoney in Oaxaca, Mexico in 1991. They found it growing in the wild alongside another of our cloud forest favorites, the firecracker plant (Cuphea ignea).

Bidens, like many genera in the Aster family, is complex and variable taxonomically. It is a widely distributed genus closely related to Coreopsis, Cosmos and Dahlia. The greatest concentration of more than 200 species is in the tropics and subtropics of the New World. Our particular specimen has yet to be identified to species even though much taxonomic work has been completed on this plant family for Mexico. It most closely resembles Bidens ferulifolia, in having 1–1.75 inch golden flowers with 4-5 ray florets and leaves that are most variable, divided into 3 leaflets or more commonly finely divided like a fern. It also has a sweet honey-like fragrance, attracting honeybees and butterflies.