Live Like The Sunflower

Perennial herb, usually 15-50 cm high, root for the taproot, stout, less branching. The majority of stems, supine or prostrate, with a section, pubescent. Leaves opposite; stipules triangular-lanceolate, separation,  leaf outline ovate or triangular ovate, base cordate, 5-10 cm long, 3-5 cm wide, the bipinnate deep cleft, small lobes ovate strip, entire or with sparse tooth surface is sparse hairs on the back puberulous along veins coat is more dense.

Umbels axillary, significantly longer than the leaves, peduncle to carry out the villous and backward pubescent, with 2-5 flowers per stem.

Capsule about 4 cm long, densely covered with short coarse hair. The seed is brown, with spots. Flowering from June to August, fruiting period from August to September.

In September the fields and roadsides of the Great Plains erupt in a blaze of yellow as the sunflowers and goldenrods (also members of the sunflower family) make their presence known to the local pollinating insects. While many sunflower species may begin blooming in July, they are not as noticeable then as later on when they have grown up and over the surrounding vegetation. There are eleven species of sunflower recorded from Kansas. 

Most of them are perennials. Only the common sunflower and H. petiolaris, the Prairie Sunflower, are annuals. Identification of sunflowers can be very complicated because they frequently hybridize and even within species there is a high degree of variability. With a little practice, however, the most common species can be readily recognized.

It was brought back to the Old World by the early European explorers and widely cultivated there also. Today it is a common alternative crop in the Great Plains and elsewhere for food and oil production. Next time you munch down on some sunflower seeds, thank the many generations of Native Americans whose careful husbandry gave us this valuable food item.

The wild cousins of those grown on the farm are still common, however, in fields, roadsides and disturbed ground throughout the Great Plains.

The Common Sunflower is a typical member of the Asteraceae, one of the largest and most successful families of plants. Within the structure we think of as the "flower", it actually has two different types of flowers - ray and disk flowers.

The ray flowers have the big, straplike structures that we see around the edge of the "flower" while the disk flowers occupy the middle of it. Within the Asteraceae, many confusing combinations of the two are possible along with the total absence of one or the other in some species!