Getting your questions ready
Getting your questions ready
Beat the crowd
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This sunflower quiz has 48 free questions with answers and covers the plant from root to seed head. There is botany (why the 'flower' is really hundreds of tiny florets, why young heads track the sun and old ones face east, why the seeds spiral in Fibonacci numbers, how tall the record-holder grew), history (domestication by Native Americans, the Spanish voyage to Europe, how Russian Lent turned it into an oil crop), food and farming (confectionery versus oil seeds, sunflower butter, why baseball players chew the seeds, which two countries grow half the world's supply), and culture (Kansas, Ukraine, Van Gogh's Sunflowers and the tomato-soup protest, the Vegan Society, the hidden-disabilities lanyard, Taiwan's Sunflower Movement). About half the questions are easy enough for a garden club or a classroom plant unit; the rest will make a keen gardener or a botany student pause. It works as a summer round for a quiz night, a Kansas or Ukraine themed evening, or a solo test. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia, Guinness World Records and other reference pages, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the scientific name of the common sunflower?
Helianthus annuus
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.
Q 02Sunflowers belong to which plant family, one of the largest on Earth with more than 32,000 species?
The daisies
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.
Q 03What is often called a sunflower's 'flower' is really what?
A head made of many tiny flowers
'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.
Q 04Which sunflowers actually track the sun across the sky during the day?
Only immature buds and young plants
'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.
Q 05In which compass direction do most mature sunflower heads end up facing?
East
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.
Q 06The counts of left-turning and right-turning spirals in a sunflower seed head typically form what kind of pair?
Successive Fibonacci terms
'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.
Q 07A typical garden sunflower reaches roughly what height?
About 3 metres
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.
Q 08Where is the common sunflower considered native?
Central and western North America
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.
Q 09Roughly when was the sunflower first domesticated in the Americas, according to the earliest evidence?
Around 2600 BCE
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.
Q 10Some Native American groups planted sunflowers as a 'fourth sister' to which famous trio of crops?
Corn, beans and squash
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.
Q 11Which Europeans first carried sunflower seeds back across the Atlantic, in the early 16th century?
Spanish explorers
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.
Q 12Sunflower oil became hugely popular in 19th-century Russia largely because of what?
Church rules on fasting during Lent
'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.
Q 13Botanically, what kind of fruit is a sunflower 'seed'?
Q 21After the Chernobyl disaster, sunflowers were floated on a contaminated pond to do what?
Draw radioactive elements out through their roots
'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.
Q 22For which expected guest did Van Gogh paint his 1888 sunflower vases to decorate a room in his Yellow House in Arles?
Paul Gauguin
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.
Q 23A Van Gogh Sunflowers sold at Christie's in March 1987 for a then-record price of roughly how much?
An achene
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.
Q 14The sunflower is the national flower of which country?
Ukraine
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.
Q 15Which US state is nicknamed 'The Sunflower State' and has the sunflower as its state flower?
Kansas
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.
Q 16Striped-hulled sunflower kernels sold for snacking are known in the trade as what?
Confectionery
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.
Q 17Once the hull is removed, what is the edible part of a sunflower seed called?
The heart
'The heart' is the trade name for the dehulled kernel; dried hearts are roughly half fat and a fifth protein by weight.
Q 18Players of which US sport famously chew sunflower seeds as an alternative to tobacco?
Baseball
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.
Q 19Sunflower seed spread is often used in schools as a substitute for what?
Peanut butter, for nut-allergic children
'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.
Q 20Besides cooking, sunflower oil is used to make margarine and which fuel?
Biodiesel
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.
About 40 million dollars
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.
Q 24In October 2022, climate activists threw what at Van Gogh's Sunflowers in London?
Tomato soup
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.
Q 25Which vegetable, despite its name, is actually the tuber of a sunflower species native to North America?
The Jerusalem artichoke
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.
Q 26Which British airport created the Hidden Disabilities Sunflower lanyard in 2016?
Gatwick
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.
Q 27In which country did students occupy the legislature for three weeks in the 2014 'Sunflower Movement'?
Taiwan
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.
Q 28The sunflower is the emblem of which organisation, founded in Britain in 1944 by Donald Watson?
The Vegan Society
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.
Q 29The sunflower sea star, one of the largest sea stars in the world, usually has how many arms?
Sixteen to twenty-four
'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.
Q 30Sunflower oil is an especially rich source of which nutrient?
Vitamin E
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.