48 Fun Facts About Sunflowers

What is the scientific name of the common sunflower?

Helianthus annuus is the common sunflower, named by Linnaeus in Species Plantarum (1753); Rudbeckia hirta is the black-eyed Susan and Calendula officinalis the pot marigold.

Sunflowers belong to which plant family, one of the largest on Earth with more than 32,000 species?

The daisies (Asteraceae) number about 32,000 species, roughly a tenth of all flowering plants; lettuce, dandelions and chrysanthemums are all cousins of the sunflower.

What is often called a sunflower's 'flower' is really what?

'A head made of many tiny flowers' is the botanical truth: the dark centre is packed with hundreds of disc florets, each a complete five-petalled flower able to set one seed.

Which sunflowers actually track the sun across the sky during the day?

'Only immature buds and young plants' follow the sun; the bending comes from faster growth on the shaded side of the stem, and once the stalk stops elongating the head locks in place.

In which compass direction do most mature sunflower heads end up facing?

East: a 2016 Science study found that east-facing heads warm faster after sunrise and attracted about five times as many pollinators as heads turned to face west.

The counts of left-turning and right-turning spirals in a sunflower seed head typically form what kind of pair?

'Successive Fibonacci terms' such as 34 and 55 or 55 and 89 are the usual spiral counts; each number is the sum of the two before it, the sequence Fibonacci set out in 1202.

A typical garden sunflower reaches roughly what height?

About 3 metres is the usual height, though dwarf cultivars stop near 50 cm; the rough, hairy stem carries broad lower leaves and a head that can span 30 cm.

Where is the common sunflower considered native?

Central and western North America is the sunflower's homeland: wild plants range from southern Canada through the Great Plains and western United States into northern Mexico.

Roughly when was the sunflower first domesticated in the Americas, according to the earliest evidence?

Around 2600 BCE: a domesticated seed from the San Andrés site in Tabasco, Mexico, is the oldest claimed, with Tennessee finds from about 2300 BCE close behind, hinting at two domestications.

Some Native American groups planted sunflowers as a 'fourth sister' to which famous trio of crops?

Corn, beans and squash were the Three Sisters; sunflowers planted along the north edge of the plot sheltered them from wind without casting shade across the southern sun.

Which Europeans first carried sunflower seeds back across the Atlantic, in the early 16th century?

Spanish explorers carried seeds home from the New World around 1510, and European herbals were describing the plant by the 1560s; for two centuries it remained a garden curiosity.

Sunflower oil became hugely popular in 19th-century Russia largely because of what?

'Church rules on fasting during Lent' did it: the Orthodox Church barred most fats during the fast but sunflower oil was absent from its list, so Russians adopted it and built an industry on it.

Botanically, what kind of fruit is a sunflower 'seed'?

An achene is the botanical term: the 'seed' is a dry, one-seeded fruit whose striped hull is the fruit wall, with the true seed inside.

The sunflower is the national flower of which country?

Ukraine treats the sunflower as its national flower; in June 1996 American, Russian and Ukrainian ministers planted sunflowers at the Pervomaysk missile base to mark the removal of its Soviet nuclear warheads.

Which US state is nicknamed 'The Sunflower State' and has the sunflower as its state flower?

Kansas made the wild sunflower its state flower in 1903; its motto Ad astra per aspera means 'to the stars through difficulties', and it is also called the Wheat State.

Striped-hulled sunflower kernels sold for snacking are known in the trade as what?

Confectionery is the trade term for the large, striped-hull seeds sold for snacking; the smaller black-hulled oil type has thinner shells and a higher fat content.

Once the hull is removed, what is the edible part of a sunflower seed called?

'The heart' is the trade name for the dehulled kernel; dried hearts are roughly half fat and a fifth protein by weight.

Players of which US sport famously chew sunflower seeds as an alternative to tobacco?

Baseball players began spitting sunflower shells across dugout floors in the mid-20th century as a substitute for chewing tobacco, a habit Major League Baseball restricted for new players in 2016.

Sunflower seed spread is often used in schools as a substitute for what?

'Peanut butter, for nut-allergic children' is what it replaces: SunButter is made the same way, by grinding roasted seeds, and it turns green in baked goods when chlorogenic acid meets baking soda.

Besides cooking, sunflower oil is used to make margarine and which fuel?

Biodiesel is made by reacting the oil with methanol into methyl esters; refined sunflower oil also has a smoke point near 230 °C, which is why it suits deep frying.

After the Chernobyl disaster, sunflowers were floated on a contaminated pond to do what?

'Draw radioactive elements out through their roots' is rhizofiltration: in 1994 sunflowers on rafts pulled caesium and strontium from a pond near the plant, and the plants were then harvested as waste.

For which expected guest did Van Gogh paint his 1888 sunflower vases to decorate a room in his Yellow House in Arles?

Paul Gauguin arrived in October 1888 and the visit ended badly: after nine weeks of quarrels Van Gogh cut off part of his own ear and Gauguin left for Paris.

A Van Gogh Sunflowers sold at Christie's in March 1987 for a then-record price of roughly how much?

About 40 million dollars: the price was £24.75 million, paid by Yasuda Fire and Marine Insurance under chairman Yasuo Goto, and the picture now hangs in Tokyo's Sompo Museum of Art.

In October 2022, climate activists threw what at Van Gogh's Sunflowers in London?

Tomato soup, from two Heinz cans, hit the glass at the National Gallery on 14 October 2022; only the frame was slightly damaged, and the Just Stop Oil pair glued themselves to the wall.

Which vegetable, despite its name, is actually the tuber of a sunflower species native to North America?

The Jerusalem artichoke is Helianthus tuberosus; 'Jerusalem' is thought to be a mangling of girasole, Italian for sunflower, and its tubers store inulin rather than starch, hence their reputation for causing wind.

Which British airport created the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower lanyard in 2016?

Gatwick introduced the green lanyard with yellow sunflowers in May 2016 so that staff could recognise passengers with non-visible disabilities without their having to explain themselves.

In which country did students occupy the legislature for three weeks in the 2014 'Sunflower Movement'?

Taiwan: students held the Legislative Yuan from 18 March to 10 April 2014 against a trade-in-services pact with China, and a florist's gift of a thousand sunflowers gave the movement its name.

The sunflower is the emblem of which organisation, founded in Britain in 1944 by Donald Watson?

The Vegan Society took the sunflower as its emblem; Watson coined 'vegan' from the first three and last two letters of 'vegetarian', and the society's sunflower trademark has certified products from 1990.

The sunflower sea star, one of the largest sea stars in the world, usually has how many arms?

'Sixteen to twenty-four' arms is typical of Pycnopodia helianthoides, which can span a metre and eats sea urchins; a wasting disease from 2013 destroyed more than 90 percent of some populations.

Sunflower oil is an especially rich source of which nutrient?

Vitamin E, mostly as alpha-tocopherol, is abundant in sunflower oil at roughly 40 mg per 100 g; the fat-soluble antioxidant also slows the oil going rancid on the shelf.

Farmers plant sunflowers for their 'allelopathic' properties. What does that mean?

That is also why grass often struggles under a bird feeder full of sunflower seed: the hulls leach the same growth-inhibiting compounds.

Why do farmers like sunflower cultivars bred with drooping heads?

'They reduce bird damage' is the main reason: a head hanging face-down is harder for birds to perch on and pick at, and it also sheds rain that would otherwise rot the seeds.

What controls the daily swing of a young sunflower's head?

'A circadian rhythm synchronised by the sun' drives it: one side of the stem grows faster by day and the other by night, and the swing persists for days under constant light.

The Sunflower Galaxy, Messier 63, lies in which constellation?

Canes Venatici holds the Sunflower Galaxy, Messier 63, a spiral found by Pierre Méchain in 1779 whose patchy, flocculent arms suggested a flower head to early observers.

Which French explorer introduced the Jerusalem artichoke to Europe in the early 1600s?

Samuel de Champlain came across the tubers among the Nauset of Cape Cod in 1605 and noted their artichoke-like taste; the plant was growing in France within a few years.

Standard sunflower oil is richest in which fatty acid?

Linoleic acid, a polyunsaturated omega-6 fat, makes up well over half of standard sunflower oil; breeders later produced high-oleic types dominated by oleic acid instead.

Sunflower seeds are the standard ingredient in what everyday product for wildlife?

Birdseed mixes lean on black-oil sunflower seed because its thin shell is easy for small birds such as chickadees and finches to crack and its kernel is rich in fat.

How did Van Gogh's 1887 Paris sunflower paintings differ from the Arles vases?

'They showed cut flowers lying on the ground': the four 1887 Paris canvases are close-up paintings of severed heads, and two of them were swapped for work by a fellow painter who admired them.

Post Malone and Swae Lee's 2018 hit 'Sunflower' came from which animated film?

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018) used 'Sunflower' by Post Malone and Swae Lee as Miles Morales's theme, and the single reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in January 2019.

What term describes the sterile, petal-like blooms around the rim of a sunflower head?

Ray florets are the sterile outer 'petals', each a ligule of fused petals that may be yellow, red or orange by cultivar, while the fertile centre is made of disk florets.

As of 2020, where did sunflower oil rank among the world's most-produced vegetable oils?

Fourth: palm, soybean and rapeseed oils each outsold it in 2020, and some high-oleic sunflower varieties carry more monounsaturated fat than olive oil.

Who directed Sunflower (1970), starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni?

Vittorio De Sica directed Sunflower (1970), in which Sophia Loren searches the Soviet Union's sunflower fields for a husband missing since the war.

Each sunflower floret is offset from the next by roughly what 'golden angle'?

137.5 degrees is the golden angle, 360 divided by the square of the golden ratio; Helmut Vogel's 1979 model placing florets on a Fermat spiral at that angle reproduces the head's packing.

The sunflower was the emblem of which late 19th-century artistic tendency?

The Aesthetic Movement took the sunflower and the lily as its emblems; Oscar Wilde was associated with both, and Gilbert and Sullivan's Patience (1881) mocked the craze.

The sunflower is one of the official civic blooms of which Japanese city?

Kitakyushu, the industrial port city in Fukuoka Prefecture, designated the sunflower and the azalea as its city flowers.

Which root-parasitic plants can wipe out as much as 100 percent of a sunflower crop?

Broomrapes, especially Orobanche cumana, attach to sunflower roots and can destroy an entire crop; downy mildew and Fusarium are the other major threats.

Which English botanist disputed the idea that sunflower heads follow the sun, in 1597?

John Gerard grew sunflowers in his Holborn garden and wrote in his 1597 Herball that he 'could never observe' the heads turning, though he had tried to discover the truth of it.

Which Russian peasant is credited with first pressing sunflower seeds for oil in 1829?

Daniil Bokaryov pressed the first sunflower oil in 1829 in Alexeyevka, Voronezh Governorate, using a hand press, and the town's coat of arms bears a sunflower.