Sunflowers 101

Sunflower Overview:
With the increasing interest in ornamental Sunflowers and several million acres of land
devoted to oilseed production, the Sunflower is a very popular plant. The Sunflower is one of only four major crops of global importance native to the United Sates (blueberry, cranberry and pecan are the other three). Ironically when the colonists and explorers sent it back to Europe the Sunflower was treated mainly as a garden flower.

Botanical Name:
Helianthus Annuus

Introduction:
With brown or yellow disks that can grow as much as ten inches in diameter, the Sunflower had to have a history just as impressive. Incas considered them to be the image of their sun-god and wore golden disks with its likeness that were later coveted by Spanish conquerors. The seeds were sacred food for the Plains Indians, who placed bowls of them on graves to sustain the dead in their afterlife journey.

• From the Greek "helios" (sun) and "anthos" (flower) because the Sunflower turns its head toward the sun. The specific epithet name annuus means annual in reference to it completes its life cycle in one year.
• The Incas considered the sunflower to be the image of their sun-god and wore golden disks with its likeness that were coveted by the Spanish conquerors.
• Sunflower seeds were a sacred food for the Plains Indians, who placed bowls of seed on graves to sustain the dead in their after life journey. Seeds are often used for bird feed.
• Many new cultivars have been developed in the past ten years, with single and double flower forms, bicolored petals. Some cultivars are somewhat ethylene sensitive even though most members of the aster family are not ethylene sensitive.
• These native American flowers were originally grown more for their usefulness than their beauty, as the oil from Sunflower Seeds is used for food, soap, paint and cosmetics. The Compositae or aster family is vast, with over 20,000 species, and is also one of the most developed families. It was named Compositae because the flowers are actually a "composite" of many individual flowers into one head. Hence, when children pull one "petal" off at a time, saying "she/he loves me, loves me not", they are actually removing a complete flower, not just a petal.

Attributes:
Daisy-like flowers, 2-10 inches across, with ray petals surrounding a large brown or yellow disk,
stems thick, leafy, hairy, 3-4 feet long, with single flowers or branched to form sprays of flowers

Availability:
Year-Round, Peak from June - October