Door to Nature

Photo by Roy Lukes.

There are few cultivated crops that intrigue and fascinate me more than a large field of sunflowers displaying their sunny smiles to whoever will enjoy them. Their brilliant flowers and manner of growth may even dispel a common belief still held by many people. Patient observers proved by watching the big showy flowers that they do not follow the path of the sun across the sky during the day. Rather they remain to a great extent with their enormous faces glued on the eastern horizon.

Another fascinating discovery awaits the curious naturalist. Actually it was an Italian mathematician, Leonardo Fibonacci (fib-o-NAH-che), who elaborated on this design. It has to do with the cross-sectional shapes of the seeds and especially the manner in which they are so efficiently packed together.

Photo by Roy Lukes.

Select the largest ripened sunflower head you can find, preferably one from the giant plant, Helianthus annuus (he-lee-AN-thus AN-you-us). You should notice immediately that there are two distinct sets of spirals in the geometric placement of the seeds. One runs clockwise, the other counterclockwise. Mark one of the seeds in the outer row. You can trace two separate rows of seeds in toward the center. Now count the number of clockwise rows and then the counterclockwise rows. There is a good chance that there will be 34 clockwise and 55 counterclockwise.

Fibonacci, who lived from 1170 to 1230, apparently was fascinated by the spirals of nature. These could be seen in the petals of a flower, a Black-eyed Susan or a sunflower head with the neatly arranged seeds in two different spirals, scales on a pine cone, thorns on a rose bush, as well as the leaves of many garden vegetables. The mathematical progression produced what is now referred to at the Fibonacci series: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377 and so on. Notice that each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers.

I wonder if the Greeks of hundreds of years ago could have thought that two of their words, helios (the sun) and anthos (a flower), would someday be combined to form a word describing one of the warmest, most radiant, sunny plants known to man, Helianthus, the sunflower. Birds and other wildlife crave the meat of their seeds, and Indians of the Americas knew this plant well and used the seeds for eating, as flour and cooking oil, its stalks for fuel and its ashes as fertilizer.

One of the largest and most commonly cultivated species of today, H. annuus, originated in Peru. It is not known in the wild state in this country. Early historians described it in Madrid in 1567, apparently brought there by explorers returning to Spain from America. Today this plant of the sun is the floral emblem of Peru and the state flower of Kansas. Henry Ward Beecher summed it well when he said the sunflower is “plain, honest and upright.” Perhaps that’s what the citizens of Kansas had in mind when they chose it to be their state flower.

Experts list 67 species of sunflowers with many varieties or races, most being confined to America. They hybridize readily and, as a result, many fascinating and beautiful cultivars have been developed in recent years. As surely many of you have learned from experience, they are easy to grow, are not fussy about soil, require little attention and make wonderful cut flowers.

Photo by Roy Lukes.

Several years ago our friends, Carl and Ruth Scholz, dug from the prairie at The Farm a clump of the beautiful, tall and stately Maximilian’s Sunflower, H. maximiliani (H. max-i-MIL-e-a-nye) and today they grow and expand beautifully in our field. This very hardy native American sunflower was named for Maximilian of Wied, a Prussian prince, who interestingly collected this plant while traveling in the U.S. from 1832-34.

Examine one of the towering radiant sunflower plants from all angles and I think you’ll agree that it’s an excellent candidate for national distinction. How I wish it would have been chosen as our national flower rather than the rose. In the first place it’s the only native North American crop valued as a food crop on a worldwide basis. What a spectacular ornament this plant is, growing as either a showy garden annual or one of many species of perennial wildflowers to be found in various habitats, marsh to desert, from sea level to over 7,000 feet.

Sunflowers are of considerable economic importance to Russia, India and France and are finally receiving more and more attention in the U.S., their native country. Unfortunately the price of the black oil sunflower seeds that so many of us feed to the birds has risen in light of more acres being planted to corn and fewer to sunflowers.

It is known that the protein content of its seeds is nearly as high as that of beef steak, and higher than all other vegetable seeds. Some people claim they are beneficial for eyesight, complexion, and blood pressure. The oil, used in salads and cooking, is a good source of unsaturated fatty acids. One health expert says they are miniature sunlamps in your digestive system.

Search the entire flower kingdom and I don’t think you will find another plant having such a perfect combination of fine attributes: beautiful to look at, highly nourishing as food, useful in various ways, native of this country, can be grown in every state, associated with the all-important sun, and symbolizing the great importance of more and more conversion to the use of solar energy.

As for me, give me their quiet, towering, golden happiness in flower and their prized seeds to feed to the birds who will bring Helianthus sunshine to the lives of people from January through December.