The name Rudbeckia doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, so it's no surprise the plant has a collection of common names including: black-eyed Susan, conedisk, conedisk sunflower, tall coneflower, gloriosa daisy and even brown-eyed Susan. Good old Carl Linnaeus, the botanist who started our current plant naming conventions, named the genus Rudbeckia after a botany professor, Olaf Rudbeck, and Rudbeck's father who had founded the botanical garden at Uppsala University in Sweden. 1
R. 'Maya', shown here, is one of the many new R. hirta varieties. These are often referred to as Gloriosa Daisies and many are grown as annuals. 'Maya' is a dwarf variety, reaching only about 10" in height and looks more like a large marigold than a small black-eyed Susan. Hopefully the annual varieties will self-seed in your garden border and return for many years. However be warned that not all the annual varieties billed as self-seeders mature in time to drop their seed in colder areas. If that sounds like your garden, try planting earlier and collecting some seed at the end of the season, just in case.
1National Garden Bureau (www.ngb.org)