Its native range is farther west, but Lance-Leaved Coreopsis is frequently cultivated and has established itself here. This plant was part of a small colony blooming in early July in a recently disturbed hillside clearing in Scott Township, along with a much larger colony of Coreopsis tinctoria, another Midwestern import. The four points at the end of each ray are distinctive.
Gray describes the genus and the species:
COLEOPSIS L. TICKSEED. Heads many-flowered, radiate; rays mostly 8, neutral, rarely wanting. Involucre double; each series of about 8 bracts, the outer foliaceous and somewhat spreading; the inner broader and appressed, nearly membranaceous. Receptacle flat, with membranaceous chaff deciduous with the fruit. Achenes flat, obcompressed (i.e. flattened parallel with the bracts of the involucre), often winged, not narrowed at the top, 2-toothed or 2-awned, or sometimes naked at the summit; the awns not barbed downwardly. — Herbs, generally with opposite leaves and yellow or party-colored (rarely purple) rays. Too near the last section of Bidens, but generally well distinguished as a genus. (Name from koris, a bug, and opsis, appearance; from the form of the achene.)
§2. Style-tips abruptly cuspidate, hispid; involucres nearly equal; achenes roundish, winged, incurved, often papillose and with a callus inside at base and apex; pappus 2 small teeth or none; rays mostly yellow andpalmately lobed; perennials, with long-pedunculate heads; lower leaves petiolate.
* Wings of achene broad, thin, spreading.
3. С. lanceolàta L. Smooth or hairy, 3-6 din. high, tufted, branched only at the base ; leaves all entire (the lower rarely with a pair of small lateral lobes), lanceolate, the lowest oblanceolate or spatulate; outer bracts ovate-lanceolate. — Rich or damp soil, Ont. and Mich, to Va., Mo., and southw.; also cultivated on account of its showy heads, and sometimes escaping eastw. May-July.
Flora Pittsburghensis 