Shortray zinnia occupies a narrow, specific corner of the North American landscape — the open rocky roadsides and disturbed ground of western Texas and northern Mexico — and it is not a plant that turns up often in nurseries or garden centers. That obscurity is worth working around for gardeners in zones 8 and 9 who have dry, difficult spots where more showy plants refuse to settle. The genus name honors Johann Gottfried Zinn, the German botanist. The common name refers to the unusually abbreviated ray flowers that give each flower head its distinctive, spare look: each branch produces just one head, containing 7 to 20 short gold or yellow rays around a compact center.

At under 8 inches tall with a mounding, multi-stemmed form and seeds available rather than divisions, shortray zinnia suits containers, naturalized areas, and rocky or drought-tolerant gardens where its true-to-character toughness becomes an asset. It requires full sun and soil that leans dry to very dry — conditions that would stress most flowering annuals but suit this plant's origins entirely. Seeds should be spaced less than 12 inches apart for a good mass effect. It blooms across spring, summer, and fall, and when conditions are right, the long season of small gold flowers against green foliage with gold-tinted stems has a restrained, almost graphic quality that rewards a careful eye.