Sunflower

“ With ray-like florets round a disk-like face.
Men nobly call by many a name the Mount,
As over many a land of theirs its large
Calm steadfast front, like a triumphal targe
Is reared, and still with old names, fresh names vie,
Each to its proper praise and own account:
Men call the Flower, the Sunflower, sportively. ”

“ There is none high or low amongst them, being all alike, and these are our tutors, and the sunflower itself turns to the sun, the great giver of life, for its inspiration, ever turning to him, never losing sight of his face. A force inexplicable draws the flower to the King of Day, even as our hearts are turned to Him at morn and at eve, be we East or West. ”

“ The great sunflower, that grows into a giant in a single season and defies the summer sun and storm, falls an easy victim to the frosts of autumn. It, however, prepared the way for many successors, in the ripened seeds, each one of which when given favorable conditions will germinate, grow, reproduce its kind, and thus finish another cycle in the realm of vegetable life. The bean-plant, in a different way, climbs its appointed pole, enjoys the same sunshine and shower, produces its blossoms, fills long pods with ripened seeds, and gives up its life like all its fellows in the field. ”

“ The Sunflower grew up very tall, and produced a flower which always turned to the sun, from the time of his rising in the east to his setting in the west, and thus drew into itself such floods of golden light, that at last this devoted flower came to resemble somewhat the sun it worshipped. ”

“ But when my sight wanders away from the flower to others blooming with it—to all those which I have named and to the taller ones, so tall that they reach half-way up, and some even quite up, to the eaves of the lowly houses they stand against—hollyhocks and peonies and crystalline white lilies with powdery gold inside, and the common sunflower—I begin to perceive that they all possess something of that same magical quality. ”

“ So that I am not yet prepared to follow the example of the old lady who never allowed one flower in her garden to be cut, and filled her glasses with artificial Roses! Sunflowers are sprouting round their strong stems, and surrounded thus by constellations of smaller suns, are perhaps even handsomer than before. We have two curiosities of Sunflower at this moment—curious as demonstrating a resolve to exist and flower under any circumstances whatever. One is a large thick-stemmed plant, which must have met at some time with some violent discouragement ”

“ So the plant can move its leaves about as much as an animal can move its head; only it moves very much more slowly. But the sunflower, grown out of doors, can wag its head fast enough to keep up with the sun. Indeed, it is called the sunflower, not so much because its blossom looks like the sun, as because, in the morning at sunrise, it bends its tip over toward the east so that the rising sun shall strike the upper sides of its leaves, follows the sun around thru the sky all day, and in the evening finds itself with all its upper leaves facing west. ”

“ That is to say, no sunflower would produce seed with its own pollen, even though it came from a different head. Here was a dilemma; there was, so far as we could tell, only one plant of the red sunflower in the world, and this could not be self-fertilized! The only thing to do was to make crosses with ordinary sunflowers, and see what would come of it. It must now be explained that, aside from the color of the rays, there are many kinds of sunflowers. ”

“ They do, and the daisy, and the marigold, and the zinnia, and the aster, and your lettuce, too, Davy, and many, many more. Whenever you see a flower with a round bunchy center and a rim of petals, like a sunflower—no matter what color or how small it is—you will know it belongs to the Composite Family. I suppose there are more of this family in America than in any other country, but the sunflower is the finest of them all, and the most generally useful. Its seeds are full of fine oil, and are excellent food for cattle and poultry. The Indians sometimes use them for bread. ”

“ Sunflower seeds are the peanuts of this people, unaccustomed, as they are, to candy. Shy children met on the highways, overcoming their shyness, and falling into step by your side, offer you little handfuls of sunflower-seeds drawn from their stuffed pockets.{228} And when men or women go on long journeys afoot they always take with them a supply of these seeds to munch by the way. As one chats with the sunflower harvesters, the bright figures of the clover-seed gatherers flit in the upland-climbing clover fields ”

“ The heads of Sun Spots are yellow throughout and bloom all summer. The plants are 2-5 ft. tall and grow on prairies and foothills at 5000-7000 ft.
Sunflower Helianthus petiolaris Plate 39, fig. 7
One scarcely needs an introduction to the cheery Sunflower which overruns roadsides and fallow fields everywhere at 3000-8000 ft. The plants are 2-5 ft. tall and bear flowers all summer. This species is the western form of the common sunflower, Helianthus annuus. ”

“ The sunflower, or tournesol, as the French name it, follows the daily course of the sun with its disk-like inflorescence; plants, potted and placed in a window, bend toward the light, unless, perchance, the plant is an ivy, in which case it bends away from the source of illumination; trees and shrubs in the edge of a thicket or forest may be seen to slant toward the open, and in general it may be said that there is scarely a plant which does not respond more or less distinctly to the directive action of light. ”

“ Hence the sunflower, as far as it is able, moves in a circular dance towards the sun; so that if any one could hear the pulsation made by its circuit in the air, he would perceive something composed by a sound of this kind, in honour of its king, such as a plant is capable of framing. ”

“ AUTUMN FLOWERS How stout and strong and full of well-being they are—the autumn flowers of our English gardens! Hollyhocks, Tritomas, Sunflowers, Phloxes, among many others, and lastly, Michaelmas Daisies. The flowers of the early year are lowly things, though none the less lovable; Primroses, Double Daisies, Anemones, small Irises, and all the beautiful host of small Squill and Snow-Glory and little early Daffodils. Then come the taller Daffodils and Wallflowers, Tulips, and the old garden Peonies and the lovely Tree Peonies. ”

“ They don't have eyes, as we have, but they have a way of seeing the sun, and of knowing just where it is, for most of them turn [81] toward it as they grow, and some of them follow it all the way across the sky, from morning until night, and then turn back and wait for it to rise again. Your sunflower would do that, Prue, if it were out under the open sky. ”

“ I think those wise men, perhaps, never saw the wild western sunflowers, but only the big tame ones that have heavy, coarse stems and are so big and clumsy and fat that they couldn't well turn, even if they wanted to. I have seen whole fields of wild sunflowers—little ones like yours, and long before they were in bloom—with every stem bent toward the sunrise, when there was not a breath of wind blowing; and I have seen the same flowers straighten their little stems as the sun rose higher, and then bend them again to the west in the evening ”

“ Other flowers are golden like the sun and grow all together in clusters, whilst others, again, grow on the branches of trees and hang down from them by long stalks which are like threads, each thread-stalk strung with flowers, as a thread is strung with beads. Only these flower-beads are as large as sunflowers, with colours varying from orange to red, and with beautiful, deep, purple-red spots upon them. ”

“ A red annual sunflower has long been looked for, and this new hybrid strain seems to be the forerunner of a really bright red variety, containing as it does a large range of colors, from light pink to deep purplish red. ”

“ The only garden flowers I care for are the quite old-fashioned roses, sunflowers, hollyhocks, lilies and so on, and these I like to see growing as much as possible as if they were wild. Trim and symmetrical beds are my abhorrence, and most of the flowers which are put into them—hybrids with some grotesque name—Jonesia, Snooksia—hurt my eyes. ”

“ Sunflower family. Size: Perennial, 1 to 21⁄2 feet tall.
The large, solitary, coarse flower heads with their yellow petals make the Sunrays among the most impressive composites of the desert.
Flowers rise on stout stems above a luxuriant growth of leaves that make the plants appear almost egotistical in their elegant arrogance.
They are at their best in sandy washes and on dry slopes at elevations between 1,000 and 3,500 feet, often where other plants seem too hard pressed eking out an existence to produce the garish foliage and bloom achieved by the Sunray. ”

“ Thy soul takes flight
Till thou art one,
O sunflower, with the sun!
This work was published before January 1, 1928, and is in the public domain worldwide because the author died at least 100 years ago. ”

“ This flower is called sun-flower because it always turns its face to the sun. It turns as the sun goes round.
2. The sunflower grows on a strong, tall stalk. It is something like a daisy in form.
3. The deep-yellow leaves stand out in rays from the dark-coloured middle of the flower, which is called the disk. This disk is made of a large number of tiny flowers closely packed together.
4. The seeds of this flower are large and oblong, and contain oil.
5. Bees and flies visit sunflowers, to gather honey. ”

“ Many of the Sunflowers are annuals, to which this and others of a perennial character are much superior, not only in being less trouble and not liable to be out of season from mismanagement in sowing and planting, as with the annual sorts, but from the fact that their flowers are of better substance and far more durable; they are also less in size and more in number—two points of great gain as regards their usefulness as cut bloom. ”

“ Thus, for example, some flowers open only when the sky is clear, as the little pimpernel, the index of fair weather; others, as the sunflower, turn to the sun in his course from east to west; the eyes, or germinating stalk of the potato, though they shoot vigorously in the dark, are blanched ”

“ This is a slender-stemmed, graceful, showy-flowered Sunflower, common in damp woods and on the borders of thickets, from Me., Quebec, and Minn. southward. The branching stem grows from 2 to 5 feet tall; it is slightly hairy-rough on the upper portions but smooth below. The leaves are thin, rather rough-broad lance-shaped, short-stemmed and grow oppositely on the stem; they are all sharply saw-toothed. The showy flowers, growing on slender peduncles from the ends of the branches, are 2 to 3 inches across. Though often with ten rays, they just as frequently have any number from 8 to 15. ”

“ With ice a mile thick it is half a ton to the square inch, and the quantity of water produced increased accordingly.
Economic Value of the Sunflower.—The common sunflower is a native of tropical America, and there it sometimes attains the extraordinary height, for an annual plant, of twenty feet. It thrives in nearly every region of the inhabitable globe. In the south of Europe and in the northwest provinces of India it is cultivated to a considerable extent. ”

“ The common sunflower is cultivated for the sake of the honey and wax which are obtained from the flowers by the bees, and also for its seeds which are used in various ways. They furnish feed for domestic and farm animals, or are ground and made into cakes, or roasted and used as coffee. ”

“ What succeeds the skunk cabbage, hepaticas, trilliums, phlox, violets, buttercups of spring? What precedes the wild sunflowers, ragweed, asters, and goldenrod of fall?
The Landscape.—To a large extent the colour of the landscape is determined by the character of the plant societies. Evergreen societies remain green, but the shade of green varies from season to season; it is bright and soft in spring, becomes dull in midsummer and fall, and assumes a dull yellow-green or a black-green in winter. ”

“ The very large flowers of these plants sometimes present a colorful display as they take over the roadways or abandoned fields. Members of this group are generally considered weeds because of their habit of crowding out the more desirable species. Certain species of Sunflowers are now being developed for commercial purposes and produce oil for cooking and meal for livestock feed. Indians in some areas of North America cultivated sunflowers for food and for trade. ”

“ After the blossom season is over, the plant puts forth its thick foliage, and so flavors the air from earliest spring till near midwinter, with the sweet aroma which belongs to both leaf and flower. Though not evergreen, the dried leaves often cling to the bushes until the new growth displaces them. ”

“ All about me the things of Nature are still in the mystical, subtile tenderness of their young, green growth. The golden days of autumn are full of their own beauty. The grey days of winter’s mist and fog have theirs, but there is something in the tender blue days of the rainy springtime that sets the heart apraise, and brings out as nothing else can, the meanings of leaf and bud, of flower and tree. ”

“ Can words describe the fragrance of the very breath of spring--that delicious commingling of the perfume of arbutus, the odor of pines, and the snow-soaked soil just warming into life? Those who know the flower only as it is sold in the city streets, tied with wet, dirty string into tight bunches, withered and forlorn, can have little idea of the joy of finding the pink, pearly blossoms freshly opened among the withered leaves of oak and chestnut, moss and pine needles in which they nestle close to the cold earth in the leafless, windy northern forest. ”