I was recently up in the hills of northern Utah, and found a new to me species of coneflower.:) Rudbeckia maxima. I was thrilled! This brought up a question. Echinacea is a coneflower, whose scientific name is echinacea spp. I know that you have taught that the Rudbeckia, Black-Eyed Susans also used to be in the same family as Echinacea spp.  My question is this: The plants that are named with an spp., does that mean that all of the plants in the same family have similar medicinal properties?  What does spp. stand for?
I thought it so fitting that this coneflower would be located where there would possibly be venomous snakes, although we were happy not to have crossed any 🙂