I agree. Rudbeckia fulgida or similar.

Oh good, I'm glad they're what I hoped they were. I thought the Black Eyed Susans in this area had thinner leaves.

Is it common for them not to bloom their first year? Some were planted in the fall, and others this spring (all from the same source).

I think most black eyed susans are biennials, so it should bloom next summer, then reseed and die. The first year plants that come up your third summer (from next summer's blooms/seeds) probably won't bloom, so likely won't have flowers that 3rd year (but you should have lush green growth, which is still pretty and helps keeps weeds down). But after that, you should have continuous reseeding and flowering every year. If you definitely want flowers the 3rd year, add another plant next summer for blooms the following (3rd) summer. They can be heavy spreaders. If you don't want it to spread all around, you can "sort of" control it by spreading the seeds yourself in the Fall instead of nature letting it go wild all over - just take seed heads and sprinkle only where you want the next crop to come up, then cut off other seed heads so they don't get scattered as much.

Interesting! Thank you for the information. I didn't realize they were biennial. It looks like goldstrum is a true perennial, so I likely don't have that variety.

There are biennial Rudbeckia but agree yours looks like R. fulgida, in which case it will come back for many years. It is a perennial.

If it was fulgida, however, wouldn't it have likely bloomed this year?

Not necessarily. Some perennials like to establish themselves before blooming. How long has it been in your garden?

They haven't been in for very long: one of the plants was planted last fall, and the others were planted in the spring just after the last frost date. I couldn't find anything online about when transplants were expected to start blooming.

In my climate, unless it was a seedling last fall, it would have bloomed this year...but wait on it...sometimes it just takes longer. Typically purple coneflowers will flower in their first year if started early, however, I have a very slow going third year plant (from seed) that SHOULD flower next year. It grows stoutly, just not fast. Just like people, some are on their own schedule.

They weren't seedlings, but maybe they just need some time. I'll just wait and see what happens. At this point I'm just glad they're black eyed susans.