Home » Plants & Animals » North American Wildflowers » Nothing Common About Sunflowers

Nothing Common About Sunflowers

© Gregg Pasterick

I could never decide if the sunflowers that spread along our barn were Woodland Sunflowers (Helianthus divaricatus), or Jerusalem Artichokes (Helianthus tuberosus), and thumbing through field guides only confused me more.

Among the tattered, dog-eared pages I found Sawtooth Sunflowers (Helianthus grosseserratus), Thin-leaved Sunflowers (Helianthus decapetalus), Stiff-haired Sunflowers (Helianthus hirsutus), and Small Wood Sunflowers (Helianthus microcephalus). Fortunately, I was able to rule out species such as Ashy Sunflower (Helianthus mollis) and Maximilian Sunflower (Helianthus maximilianii) because they didn’t grow in my neck of the woods, but I still couldn’t identify the sunflowers flourishing along my barn.

I knew they weren’t Common Sunflowers (Helianthus annuus), but that didn’t qualify as even a small victory. As it turned out, I didn’t know much about them either.

Common Sunflowers, which are noticeably smaller than the familiar cultivated variety, are annuals. (That, I knew). In this large genus of about 70 species, Prairie Sunflowers (Helianthus pauciflorus) are the only other annual. (That, I didn’t know.) The remaining 68 or so are perennials.

Their genus name, Helianthus, is from the Greek helios, “sun”, and anthos, “flower”. In general, they are easy to recognize, their happy yellow flowers facing the sun. Trying to identify individual species, a task I found daunting, is further muddied by their eagerness to hybridize. At least that explained the annually changing appearance of the sunflowers that rose from the soil of our garden, sunflowers that sprouted from seeds I gathered the previous year.

Sunflowers were used by native peoples in Mexico and Peru, in ceremonies honoring the sun. Aztec priestesses wore them in their hair, and Europeans found many representations of sunflowers, wrought in pure gold, decorating Aztec and Incan temples. (My barn, an Aztec temple?).

Native Americans used sunflower seeds for bread flour, and the oil was used in cooking and for dressing hair. The Huron used the stalks as a source of fiber for cloth. They also used the leaves for fodder, and the petals for yellow dye. The Ojibwas made a poultice from the leaves, which was used to treat blisters. The Senecas roasted the seeds and boiled them in water like coffee.

In the arcane world of runes, glyphs, thaumaturgy and silky gowns embroidered with stars and planets, some believe sleeping with a sunflower under the bed allows you to know the truth in any matter. Another such belief is that if you cut a sunflower at sunset while making a wish, that wish, so long as it is not too grand, will come true before the next sunset. (And some people, I think, have too much free time.)