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Helianthus annuus |
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| Common name |
sunflower |
| Family |
asteraceae |
| Life cycle |
annual |
| Flowers |
yellow (summer) |
| Size |
6' and taller |
| Light |
sun |
From seed  |
self-seeds in our garden. germinate warm.
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| The common sunflower. For all its ubiquity and overuse in country-style decorations, it remains a cool and intriguing plant. We don't remember to start them every year, but usually a few appear anyway, seeded either from the previous year's batch or from birdfood gone astray. Usually we wind up with the common varieties, such as giant Russian, although we've tried a few others through the years.
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| February - the stalk that once towered high above the rest of the garden is
losing its battle with gravity, its stark flowerhead bearing little resemblance to its
radiant summer face |
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| | Same scene, next day |
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| | 'Lemon Queen' |
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| | A forest of sunflowers, just before bursting into bloom |
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In our Texas garden, we never purposely introduced sunflowers, but once again bird food was likely the cause of their arrival one year. They've been back in force every year since, certainly the result of rampant self-seeding – consistently the same variety, growing tall and multi-branched with many smaller sunflowers on each plant. They would not be difficult to remove, but I like how they fill in empty spaces; so I allow many of them to stay. More than I should, in fact, since they do tend to crowd out other plantings.
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In our garden, this plant grows in the following area: back fence border About my plant portraits
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Last modified:
December 27, 2024
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