A name used by C.S. Rafinesque. David Hollombe sent me the following: “Rafinesque’s brief description in a paper in ‘Journal de physique, de chimie et d’histoire naturelle et des arts’ in 1819 mentions the rays as being bifid, although that explanation does not account for the ‘t’.” Rafinesque often assigned unexplained names to plants. It is curious that about 60 sites online use the spelling Ratidiba rather than Ratibida
Species
columnifera
Bearing columns, in reference to the tall cylindrical flower heads