I live in far south texas, kingsville is about 475 miles south of Dallas and about 275 miles south west of houston and the mexican border is about 85 to 100 miles away. My wife and I like to travel up to south western colorado to visit her brother. This time when we were through with that visit, the decision was made to go to nebraska to visit my daughter. On the way to Omaha we noticed a very fancy looking sunflower by the roadside. It wasn't large most of the time we saw it. But what was notable, were the multiple flowers on one stalk it had. They were small for sunflowers, but very nice and bright yellow. Apparently, they are very common up there. We eventually encountered huge clumps of them, as if in a garden. Only it was open field. I will do a web search and see if there are photos of it. Unless someone out there is willing to take a stab at suggesting what kind it might be.
Could be. Most of the sunflowere we have this far south get pretty ratty looking by the end of their flowering cycle. We do however have one that has silvery blue grey leaves. It too though gets a lot of wind burn and becomes pretty weedy.
Were you able to stop and get a close look? Were the stems soft and velvety? Maybe a Tithonia (Mexican sunflower)? Usually orange, but I've seen yellow ones too. They were growing 1-2m tall with 6+ flowers per stem in our front yard in Atlanta.
