It is native to North America, where it occurs in Ontario in Canada and the eastern and central United States as far west as New Mexico.

[5] The large leaves are held vertically with the tips pointing north or south and the upper and lower surfaces of the blades facing east or west.

A newly emerging leaf grows in a random direction, but within two or three weeks it twists on its petiole clockwise or counterclockwise into a vertical position.

Surveys of the insect fauna on typical compass plants have noted many different taxa, often present in large numbers.

The vast majority of insects on the stems are the gall wasps Antistrophus rufus and A. minor, and the many types of parasitoids that attack them.

The larva of the wasp lives and feeds inside the gall, overwinters there, and emerges as an adult the following spring.

[12] Other insects found in the plant include several species of parasitoid wasps that attack A. rufus larvae in the galls, the two most common being Eurytoma luta and Ormyrus labotus.

The beetle Mordellistena aethiops lives on the plant, its larvae boring into the stems, and it is attacked by parasitoid wasps of the genera Schizopyramnus, Heterospilus, and Tetrastichus.

[14] In the environmental classic, A Sand County Almanac, Aldo Leopold devotes much of the July entry to Silphium—its hardiness, but its slow disappearance nevertheless, a harbinger of the fate of the prairie.