Sunflower

Facts about Sunflowers

This is an extremely beautiful and indeed rather dominating flower to have in your garden. One of the reasons for this is, of course, the massive flower heads.

It heads can be as much as thirty centimeters across, and are exceedingly complex. It is not just a single flower, but actually thousands of little florets, each a perfect flower in its own right, perfect in every part, and each of which will ultimately form into a seed.

In its complexity and size is reminiscent, perhaps, of the ancient ages of the world, when plant life dominated a great deal more over the animal.

Only the outer most ring of florets has the distinctive petals – these are yellow and usually have a slightly greenish tinge when the flower is young.

As the flower matures, the greenish coloration disappears and the yellow of the flower itself tends to take on a deeper orange shade.

There is a great deal of symbolism associated with the flower, for various reasons. It stands for spring, with its associations of life, birth, peace and progress.

The sunflower's place in your garden

Remember that this plant will thrive in strong sunlight, in conditions in which most other plants would simply wither away and die. Added to this is the fact that, unknown to most people there are actually a great many varieties of them.

Yes, the big yellow flower that everyone knows of is certainly not the only kind of it – there are all sorts of varieties available, in a wide range of colors, and in sizes that range from the massive to small dwarf varieties.

This means that this plant can be used to create all sorts of looks in a garden – you can use different varieties together to bring three dimensional beauty to your garden, or you can mix these flowers in among other plants that will accentuate them.

These flowers are also excellent for decorating your house – if you cut them and put them into a vase, they will not only attract the attention and brighten the day of everyone in the house, but will also last a long time. A cut sunflower in water can last up to ten days.

Taking care of the plants

The shells of its seeds contain some components which are poisonous to grass. So you have two options: to harvest the heads of this plant before the seeds fall out, or to let the grass nearby be killed if you do not care for that.

It is rather easy to take care of this plant. Most species of this plant require only slightly fertilized, but well drained soil. They set their seed very rapidly and sprout rather fast, that is why you should sow the sunflowers in exact place where they are supposed to grow.

Warnings

The seeds can attract all kinds of unwanted visitors in your garden, like insects, squirrels and rabbits, who can damage different plants around and make a big mess.

That is why you should sow three times more seeds than actually needed, in order to ensure all of them will not be eaten. As for birds, it is advisable to remove the seeds from a grown sunflower and out them to your bird feeder.

Of course, you can allow the birds to eat the seeds directly from its heads, but this process is much more messy, and it will take additional troubles to keep your garden tidy.

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