Question 1

True or false: Black-eyed Susans are native only to the eastern United States and cannot grow west of the Mississippi.

Accepted Answer

False. They are native to most of North America, including many western states, and are widely naturalized across the continent.

Question 2

True or false: The Black-Eyed Susan's dark center is not a single seed head but a cluster of tiny individual flowers.

Accepted Answer

True. The black center is a composite of many tiny disc florets, each capable of producing a seed, surrounded by yellow ray petals.

Question 3

True or false: The Black-Eyed Susan flower is named after the character Susan from the novel 'The Black Arrow' by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Accepted Answer

False. There's no connection to Stevenson's novel; the name predates it and likely derives from folk traditions or botanical naming.

Question 4

True or false: Black-eyed Susans are biennials, meaning they bloom only in their second year and then die.

Accepted Answer

False. Most are short-lived perennials or biennials, but many varieties can bloom in their first year and live for several years.

Question 5

True or false: Black-eyed Susans are actually a species of sunflower, not a separate genus.

Accepted Answer

False. Black-eyed Susans belong to the genus Rudbeckia, not the true sunflower genus Helianthus, so they are a separate genus within the sunflower family.

Question 6

True or false: The flower's scientific name Rudbeckia honors a Swedish father and son who studied botany.

Accepted Answer

True. Carl Linnaeus named it after Olof Rudbeck the Elder and Olof Rudbeck the Younger, both prominent Swedish botanists.

Question 7

True or false: Black-Eyed Susan is named after a famous 18th-century botanist named Susan Black.

Accepted Answer

False. The name actually derives from an 18th-century ballad or folk song, not a botanist. No historical botanist named Susan Black ever existed.

Question 8

True or false: The Black-eyed Susan is the state flower of Maryland.

Accepted Answer

True. Maryland designated the Black-eyed Susan as its official state flower in 1918.

Black-Eyed Susan Trivia Questions