• The most familiar sunflower is Helianthus annuus (from the Greek words helios, meaning “sun,” anthos, meaning “flower,” and annus, meaning “year”).

• The genus Helianthus contains about 67 species and is native to the Americas. More than 60 sunflower species grow in the United States.

• Sunflower plants were domesticated around 1,000 B.C. by western Native American tribes, who then carried them eastward and southward. The plants were used extensively for food, as oil, in bread, medical ointments, dyes and body paints.  

• Spanish explorers brought sunflowers to Spain and the plants spread throughout Europe, reaching all the way to Russia.

• Sunflowers are members of the Asteraceae family, the largest family of flowering plants on Earth, with over 24,000 species, which includes daisies, asters, marigolds, zinnias, dahlias, chrysanthemums, yarrow, goldenrod, dandelions, coreopsis and bachelor’s buttons.

• There are over 70 varieties of sunflowers but only a few are used in the floral industry, the most common being yellow-petaled with brown or maroon center.

• Sunflowers have a vase life of six days to 12 days when properly cared for.

• A sunflower looks like one large flower, but each head is actually composed of hundreds of tiny flowers called florets, which ripen to become seeds. The outer florets (called ray florets) look like yellow, orange or maroon petals, are usually female, and are infertile. Central florets (called disk florets) fill the center of the circular head, are both male and female, and are fertile.

• On a sunflower, typically there are 34 spirals in one direction and 55 in the other. On a very large sunflower there may be 89 in one direction and 144 in the other.

• At the bud stage, sunflowers exhibit heliotropism — the bud of the sunflower faces the sun at all times throughout the day, starting the day facing east, and ending it facing west. This remarkable phenomenon led the French to name the flower “tournesol,” meaning, “turn with the sun.” But a mature sunflower usually points in a fixed easterly direction, because its stalk becomes harder and stiffer as it grows.

• Sunflowers are one of the faster-growing plants in the world, increasing in height up to a foot a day, and can reach eight feet 20 feet in six months.

• As of August 2013, the Guinness World Record for the tallest sunflower is 28 feet, 8.49 inches for a sunflower grown in Germany.

• A sunflower head may measure more than one foot in diameter and can produce up to 2,000 seeds. Flower heads vary in size depending on the time of year with summer months producing the largest heads.

• Annual sunflower plants are always grown from a seed, and never from seedling.

• The country that grows the most sunflowers in the world is Russia.

• The Inca Indians worshipped the sunflower as an earthly symbol of the sun god. They wore necklaces of sunflowers made of gold.

• Sunflowers were commonly used in royalty decorative objects to represent power and importance. In mirrors, ceramics and sculptures, sunflowers would face a person to indicate they were the center of the universe (such as Louis XIV, the Sun King).

• Sunflower stems are incredibly buoyant and were used as a life vest filling before the advent of modern materials.

• Sunflower oil can help relieve skin conditions, hemorrhoids and ulcers; sunflower roots are used in traditional herbal medicine to treat snakebites and spider bites; the leaves can be made into tea to relieve fevers, lung ailments and diarrhea.

• The sunflower is the state flower of Kansas, the national flower of Ukraine, the floral emblem of Peru, and the floral symbol of Kitakyushu, Japan.