One of my favorite late summer/fall perennials is Helianthus 'Lemon Queen'. It is beautiful, seems to flower for months, the pale lemon flowers glow in early morning and evening light, and it attracts hordes of pollinators.

This spring, I found about a billion seedlings scattered all around the vicinity of my clump. At first, I wasn't quite sure what they were but they did look a lot like sunflower seedlings. They started growing their first true leaves and my suspicions were confirmed--sunflowers indeed! It took me a couple of hours to pull them up.

Has anyone else found 'Lemon Queen' to be a rampant reseeder? I like the plant too much to get rid of it, but wanted to find out what experiences others have had with it.

Just like you I love this plant; maybe my favourite perennial in the month of September.

Something I've run into with other plants is no seedlings until I introduce another cultivar of the same species.

I found one plant which looked like a reverted version, brown center and yellow petals, but that had just 3 stalks very near to the original, so I rather thought it was some kind of mutation- not a seedling. It was just as tall as the pale yellow flowering stalks, so I labeled it and removed it in fall.

3 years ago the voles did a number on the patch. They probably ate 90% of it, along with the Baptisia, some Hostas, Eupatorium, etc. That was one instance where I was kind of glad that the voles had eaten them back. 2 years later you wouldn't even know the voles had touched them, whereas it is taking the other perennials much longer to rebound from extensive vole damage.