Sunflower
Helianthus annuus
It turns its face to the sun all morning. By afternoon it has made up its mind.
Overview
The sunflower is the most literal plant in the tradition — a single enormous flower head, on a stem that can grow taller than a person, tracking the sun from east to west during the day in the manner that gave it its name. This heliotropism is a feature of young growth; mature flowering sunflowers lock facing east, but the myth of the sun-follower has attached itself to every culture that encountered the plant, and the observation it rests on is accurate enough in young plants to have seemed miraculous to the first Europeans who saw vast fields of them in pre-Columbian Mexico. What they were looking at was a domesticated crop, bred over four thousand years from a weedy annual into the architectural plant before them.
Botanical Notes
A robust annual, 1–3 metres or more under cultivation, with large, rough-hairy, cordate-ovate leaves and terminal flower heads 10–30cm in diameter: yellow ray florets surrounding a central disc of small tubular florets spiralling in Fibonacci sequences visible to the naked eye. A single cultivated plant can produce hundreds of seeds. Native to North America; domesticated in Mexico and the American Southwest by at least 2500 BCE; introduced to Europe by the Spanish in the sixteenth century. Seeds contain high concentrations of linoleic acid, vitamin E, and selenium. Strongly attractive to bees, finches, and other seed-eating birds.
Lore & History
In Aztec tradition, sunflowers were associated with Tonatiuh, the sun deity, and worn as crowns by warrior-priestesses in ceremonies demanding the sun's favour. They appear in codices as emblems of solar power. The Spanish brought them to Europe as botanical curiosities before their agricultural value was understood; they were grown in palace gardens as ornamentals for a full century before the oil was pressed seriously. In Russian Orthodox tradition, the sunflower acquired a different significance entirely: it was one of the few plants permitted during Lent because sunflower oil was not classified as a prohibited fat, which drove its adoption across eastern Europe and ultimately made Russia and Ukraine the world's dominant producers — a liturgical technicality with continental consequences.
Warnings
No toxicity. The seeds are a significant allergen for some individuals with seed or tree nut allergies; cross-reactivity with other Asteraceae (ragweed, chamomile) is possible. Pollen is a common hay fever trigger during flowering. Sunflower oil expressed from the seeds is safe for most users.