Sunflowers are great for bringing the real touch of the summer season to any bouquet. They aren't just beautiful but very useful plants used for food and oil for thousands of years. Bright and cheerful, the sunflower blooms look like miniature suns and no other flower can spread summer joy like they do.

However, Sunflowers are beautiful flowers, they are not just limited to it. There are many facts about these amazingly beautiful flowers that you should be aware of. Do you know everything about sunflowers? If not, check the many facts about Sunflowers in this guide. Explore more!

The Meaning of Sunflowers

Before diving deeper, it would be better to know the basics and the meaning of Sunflowers. With their associations with sunshine, sunflowers are well-known for being a positive flower. People often send them to convey their emotions, for instance, warmth, happiness, luck, adoration, friendship, and the like. Sunflowers are an excellent choice when it comes to celebrating joyous occasions. They’re also used to cheer your loved ones who are suffering through tough times.

Sunflowers Are of Many Types

The most common and well-known Sunflower is Helianthus Annuus. The very type of sunflower has around 70 different species and all of them are native to Central and North America. Besides traditional yellow flowers, there are many white and red varieties of sunflowers. Sunflowers don’t always have the typical shape as some of them have fluffy and ruffled blooms, for instance, the Orange Sun sunflower.

They Are Native to The Americas

Sunflowers are native to the Americas and were cultivated in North America far back around 3000 BCE. They were developed for food, dye, oil as well as for medicines. After that, they were exported out of America and across the world by Spanish conquistadors.

Sunflowers Are Incredibly Useful

Sunflowers have been cultivated for more than around 5,000 years and are incredibly useful. Right from leaves to stalk and roots, the entirety of the very flower is edible and, therefore, could be utilized as food. Sunflowers were grown for food in North America before other crops, for instance, corn and the like.

Sunflowers were milled with an intent to create flour, and seeds were roasted to eat. Sunflower oil was used in cooking and also today is used for the same. The oil and pigments can be utilized for a variety of cosmetic applications, for instance, dyes and the stalk can be used in construction. You should know that the sunflowers became popular as a decorative flower at the time when Spanish explorers brought the sunflower seeds back to Europe dating back to the year 1500s.

Sunflowers Follow the Sun

Sunflowers not only resemble miniature suns but their blooms also follow the sun across the sky. They follow the sun as it moves from the east to the west during the day and moves back to their actual position at night. Keep in mind that they do this as young plants to get helped to grow properly. Once grown, they stay facing east to attract bees and many other pollinators.

Conclusion

That’s all about sunflowers! We discussed the details about the blooms and tried to learn different useful facts about the very flower. Sunflowers are incredibly useful and we tried to let you have many of them. Hopefully, you’ve got the answer to your question.