Sunflowers are beautiful plants which are native to the Americas. Named after its huge, fiery blooms, the sunflower also has a rough stem which is broad and hairy, rough leaves, and larger inflorescences. Not many people known that the head of a sunflower actually consists of 1,000 to 2,000 individual flowers which are joined together by a base. Sunflower seeds were brought to Europe from the Americas in the 16th century where they became a widespread cooking ingredient. The leaves were used as cattle feed and the stems were used in paper production. A rather useful flower indeed!

Native to Central America it was domesticated in Mexico by approximately 2600 BC. In roughly 2300 BC, sunflowers were domesticated in Tennessee. A large quantity of indigenous American peoples uses the sunflower as representative of their solar deity such as the Incas in South America. The first European to encounter the sunflower was Francisco Pizarro in Peru. Images of the flower as well as its seeds were taken to Spain in the early 16th century. Historical research has indicated that Spaniards attempted to suppress the cultivation of the sunflower due to its associations with warfare and solar religion.