Sunflowers

Since Van Gogh painted his still life of them a century ago, sunflowers have never been more popular. They big and beautiful that thrive easily given a sunny location.

When you look at a sunflower, what seems to be one gigantic flower is actually an arangement of hundreds of tiny seperate flowers. All of which are carefully positioned so that when you view it as a whole it creates the illusion of one large flower. In the plant world the boldest bloom gets the bee. So by working together pretending to be a huge flower, each of these tiny flowers are sure to benefit from the arrival of a bee. Teamwork at it's best!

All the members of the sunflower family pull off this same illusion. Some of the better known members of this family which also arrange their tiny flowers to look like a larger single bloomed flower are asters, chrysanthemums, cosmos, dahlias, daisies, dandelions, marigolds and zinnias.

If you wish to be the one with the talles sunflower in the neighborhood, the "Early Russian" will quickly grow to 8 feet or more with seed heads as big as 12 inches across. It is usually the favorite of children and is portrayed on refrigirators everywhere.