Inflorescence of the Aster family

 

The season we are in

Rudbeckia plants are finishing their life cycle.  The blooms, which I just learned is called a "disc flower" or "inflorescence," is drying and withering.  This picture shows several stages of that withering: from yellow, to green, to dark brown (I think these are ripe seeds) to tiny dark brown balls (after the birds have stripped the seeds)?

The dark center of a Rudbeckia is not a single structure but a collection of individual, tiny flowers called disc flowers, surrounded by larger, modified petal-like structures known as ray flowers or ray florets. The entire head of flowers, which appears as one large flower, is technically called an inflorescence in the Asteraceae family to which Rudbeckia belongs.  

a couple weeks ago, this was a joyous handful of yellow flowers