Likewise, although the plant grows on Stone Mountain, GA, its range extends well beyond.

The connection to the Confederacy is through Stone Mountain which contains a confederate monument, although the connection is tenuous as the species was named before the Civil War in 1849 by Harvard botanist Asa Gray in honor of Thomas Conrad Porter, a Pennsylvanian minister and botanist who collected the plant in Georgia.

[4] Gray initially named the plant Rudbeckia porteri,[5] later changed to Helianthus in 1998 by John F.

[6] The species is native to the southeastern United States, including Alabama and Georgia, but has been introduced to granite outcrop areas in North Carolina as an aggressive weed.

[7][8] Helianthus porteri grows on thin soils on and around flat rock granite and gneiss outcrops.