Surprise Sunflowers
If you've
ever noticed giant sunflower plants popping up in unexpected places around your yard, your bird feeder may be the culprit. Many birdseed mixes contain sunflower seeds.
When birds scatter seeds onto the ground, all it takes is a little rain, some
sunshine, and the right conditions for those seeds to sprout. Before you know it, you have volunteer sunflowers growing in your lawn, flower beds, garden, or even cracks along the driveway. That's exactly how many people end up with sunflowers they never intentionally planted.
Sunflowers are one of summer's most recognizable flowers. Their bright yellow blooms seem to capture sunshine itself. They
typically bloom from mid-summer through early fall and are especially popular in August and September when fields of sunflowers are at their peak.
While many backyard varieties reach 5 to 8 feet tall, some giant sunflowers can grow over 12 feet tall. The current world-record sunflower exceeded 30 feet tall...about as high as a three-story building!
One of the most fascinating things about sunflowers happens before they bloom. Young sunflower plants actually follow the sun across the sky. In the morning, their flower buds face east. As the sun moves overhead during the day, the buds slowly turn westward. Then, during the night, they gradually rotate back to the east, ready to greet the sunrise
again.
Scientists believe this movement helps the plants maximize sunlight while they are growing rapidly. Once the flowers mature, however, they usually stop moving and remain facing east. Researchers think this may help them warm up more quickly in the morning, making them more attractive to pollinators such as bees.
And here's another surprising fact: what we think of as a single sunflower is actually made up of hundreds or even thousands of tiny individual flowers packed together into one large flower head. A large sunflower can produce up to 2,000 seeds.
Sunflowers are native to North America and have been cultivated for thousands of years. Native peoples grew them for food, oil,
dye, and medicinal purposes long before European settlers arrived.
If you discover a sunflower growing where you didn't plant one, don't be too quick to pull it out. It may be a gift from one of your feathered visitors...and a reminder that sometimes the most beautiful things in our gardens arrive by accident.
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