Helenium autumnale. a. Upper part of plant showing habit, b. Lower stem and roots. From Buchholtz 1968.

According to Mish (1988), the first recorded use of the common name “sneezeweed” was in 1837, when it was used for Helenium autumnale. That may well be true, but sneezing had been associated with plant names for far longer. At least as long ago as Leonard Fuchs’s Herbal of 1542, a European composite was called “sneezewoort.” That plant was also called Ptarmica (Greek, to cause sneezing), and is now Achillaea ptarmica (Linnaeus [1753] 1957, Brako et al. 1995). Thus, knowing that plants caused sneezing is much older than the 16th century. One might say that “sneezeweed” dates at least to Galen, who lived between A.D. 129 and 200. He wrote, “The flowers of Ptarmica have the property of causing sneezing” (Galen in Meyer et al. 1999).