Native to Central America, sunflowers (Helianthus annuus) are not only a distinctive annual flower to use in brightening up the garden but also a useful, edible plant. They are easy to grow and their huge blooms give great satisfaction once they start to flower. They are a great plant for children to grow. The most distinctive feature of sunflowers is their large, often singular, yellow flower heads. It's not hard to work out why this flower was given its common name when viewing one of these gigantic yellow flowers against a bright blue sky. The flower head of the sunflower, like other members of the Asteraceae family, is actually an inflorescence of one to two thousand smaller flowers known as florets. The outer flowers (what we know as petals) are called ray florets, these are sterile and don't produce any seed. The inner flowers are called disc florets and it is these, that after pollination, form the edible seeds we know and love (as do the birds). The disc florets are arranged into a unique interconnected spiraling pattern which maximizes the number of florets that can fit within the space of the flowerhead. A common misconception about sunflowers is that their flowers track the sun (a phenomena known as heliotropism), in fact the flowers mostly face East and do not change direction during the day. The leaves and buds of young plants do however have the ability to track with the sun.



