Sunflower Flower

This vibrant flower symbolizes wishes and faithfulness. It has also become the symbol of obsession or foolish passion. The scientific name of this beautiful flower is helianthus ‘helia’ for sun and ‘anthus’ for flower. Sunflower is the national flower of Russia.

Sunflower is widely used for oil and food in many parts of the world; many cultivators use its seed for feeding their animals and birds also as it is supposed to be very beneficial to them. It continues to provide the supply of oil and seeds.

This awesome flower is the member of asterceae family and this crop is planted in a wide range of soils during a humid season. Sunflowers were first marked at Central America. The plant of sunflower is very useful and its seed is widely eaten as nuts sunflower also provides dye for body paint as well as for textile. Sunflower is also used as food for birds, animals, its oil is widely used for cooking, and sunflower oil has more vitamin E in comparison to any other edible oils.

Sunflower oil has been the only edible oil in countries like Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. The cultivation of sunflower is growing with fast speed all over the world. In recent years, the total production of sunflower has reached 21 million metric ton. It is mostly cultivated at North America.

Major sunflower production areas are Spain, china, Argentina and united states. Six percent of total sunflowers are produced in United States. The utility of sunflower oil is wide as it is used for cooking, carriage oil and is used for producing margarine and biodiesel.

Many North American planters prefer to follow four sister cropping system. It includes cultivation of corn, beans squash and sunflower.

There are two common variety of sunflower, one is oilseed, it is cultivated for oil and is also used as bird food, the other one is non-oilseed it is mainly cultivated for confectionary use and it is widely used in food items like snacks, bread etc. It is one of the major crops that are planted for edible oil.

Sunflower grows with very fast speed as it can grow 8 to 12 feet tall just in six months with proper care. The tallest sunflower was grown in Netherlands. A single sunflower can have up to 2,000 oilseeds. Sunflower attracts birds, plant it to your yard and enjoy the chirping sound of birds all day long. There are sixty different variety of this flower, but the commonest is bright yellow with dark brown centers filled with seeds. Sunflower is available in different variety of colors like red, orange, maroon and stripped even the center color has changed to green and yellow instead of brown.

Sunflower is not just a single flower it is a group of 1,000 to 2,000 flowers joined together at base. One of the most interesting facts about this flower is its heads keep moving in the direction of sun, it is known as heliotropism. Kansas City has been nicknamed “the Sunflower state”. If we talk about its price, several stemmed sunflowers in bloom would be approximately $58.00 as an average.