By Anita Westerbelt, Texas Master Naturalist
Sunflowers are survivors.
Even on dreadfully hot late summer mornings, they stand ready to meet the day; they withstand our heat and dry weather and readily bloom and reseed.
Most sunflowers dotting country roadsides, empty city lots and irrigation ditch banks are native common sunflowers, Helianthus annuus. From a distance, they populate the land with eye-catching yellow. Up close, they are busy little colonies of bugs, bees and butterflies providing nectar for butterflies and nectar and pollen for bees.
Botanically, a sunflowers’ compositae design has it that each flower head’s central disc contains many smaller tubular disc flowers, each with its own supply of nectar and pollen. The showy yellow outer ray petals of the sunflower help attract the bees and then they go from flower to flower in the disc, getting covered with pollen and then on to other sunflowers.
The finished product — the sunflower seeds — provide food for birds and insects. A sunflower’s usefulness doesn’t stop with seed production. Bees that are above-ground nesters use hollow stems of pithy-stemmed plants in which to nest. A sunflower’s root base is helpful in holding the soil during our windy summers. Even dead stalks continue to hold the soil. Mowed down and mulched, the plants continue to add nutrients and microorganisms to the soil long after they’ve fed their last butterfly.
Interestingly, the seeds in the center of a sunflower are aligned in harmony with a famous equation called the Fibonacci sequence. According to the website, www.sciencekids. co.nz/sciencefacts/ plants/sunflowers.html, “The flowers within a sunflower head are clustered in a spiral pattern whereby each floret is oriented toward the next by the golden angle of 137.5°. This produces a pattern of interconnecting spirals. The number of left and right spirals are consecutive Fibonacci numbers. Normally there are 34 spirals in one direction and 55 in the other. Very large sunflowers can have 89 in one direction and 144 in the other.”
After you’ve counted the seeds in your sunflower heads and then left the heads hanging on the dried up stalks to feed birds, bugs and possibly squirrels, don’t toss out those empty sunflower heads. They can be used as a disposable scrubbing pad for tough jobs like cleaning garden tools.
Regardless of what comes between a sunflower’s first leaves pushing out of the soil, through its grand applications in the native dimension, and on to its silent demise, in the end, the plants are excellent fodder for the compost pile. Wear gloves — the live and dead stalk is covered in very fine, itch-producing hairs. Decomposition is quicker when the debris is chopped up.
Reportedly, sunflowers naturally decontaminate soil. They can soak up hazardous materials such as uranium, lead, and even arsenic. In addition,
they have been planted to help soak up nuclear radiation. “Millions were planted after the devastating tsunami destroyed reactors in the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan,” according to an article at the following website by Molly Beauchemin, entitled “Scientists are using sunflowers to clean up nuclear radiation.” https://gardencollage. com/change/sustainability/ scientists-using-sunflowersclean- nuclear-radiation/
Anita Westervelt is a Texas Master Naturalist and writes bimonthly articles for the Monitor. References: https://homeguides.sfgate.com/beespollinate- sunflowers-65431.html https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/home/ gardening/a32638/sunflower-fun-facts/ https://shesaidsunflower.com/50-amazingfacts- about-sunflowers/
