Grows in open, moist bottomlands, lowland prairies and roadsides, flowering from August through October. For a plant so abundant in nearby Missouri and Platte River floodplain locations, it is a bit of a surprise that it has not been found recently in either the Fontenelle Forest or Neale Woods wetlands.  Marjorie Garabrandt, in her annotated list of FF and NW plants, cites a 1952 voucher from “a dry bank with prairie grasses by Gifford Road”.  More recently, in 2003 a plant was found in the small Neale Woods prairie transplant located just above the parking lot.  Photos (B,C) are of a rather stunted plant which eventually disappeared from this dry upland site very different from its original floodplain habitat.  In 2024 a few plants (photos A,D,E) believed to be Sawtooth Sunflower appeared at Fontenelle Forest in an upland prairie restoration on History Trail known as The Audubon Pollinator Plot.  Time will tell if they survive in this atypical upland location where they were presumably planted.

The smooth stem and toothed leaves separate it from our other sunflowers with flat or only slightly convex yellow disks.  The arched and folded leaves are similar to Maximillian’s Sunflower but are more deeply toothed.  Maximillian’s Sunflower also has flowers occuring intermittently more than halfway down the stem while those of Sawtooth Sunflower are situated in clusters at or near the top.