「there」の使い方

Back in September, I went to Naeba. Along the road, there were some beautiful cosmos. I stopped and snapped this photo.

• snap photos of ～の写真｛しゃしん｝を撮る ) (definition from Eijiro on the Web)
  

Last week, someone asked me:

× Is cosmos in America?
◯ Are there cosmos in America?

When you are talking about the existence of an item or category of items, use "there".

• existence 実在, 有無, 存亡, 存在, 存廃, 生命, 実存, 生存, 存立 (definitions from jmdict)

Use it with a "be" verb.

Wikipedia says that cosmos are native to the Americas, so yes, there are cosmos in America.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos_(plant)

It also says there are 20 to 26 different species of cosmos.

× I wonder what kind there are in this photo?
◯ I wonder what kind these in the photo are?

Don't use "there" when you are talking about specific ones, like in the sentence above. Maybe these are cosmos bipinnatus, from looking at the photos in Wikipedia. After tomorrow's typhoon, there might not be any more cosmos left until the next time they are in season.