Image courtesy of Fleuroselect Fleuroselect has designated the sunflower as its 2015 plant of the year. Fleuroselect, or The Home Gardening Association, is a non-profit orientated platform offering business and networking opportunities to the international ornamental and vegetable industry with a focus on home gardening. The campaign is designed to promote the use of sunflowers to home gardeners.
The association called the sunflower the "perfect plant," and it was selected partly because they are easy to grow and have masses of magnificent flowers that last for weeks on end. Their often huge and always sunny faces appeal to all ages, but there is far more to these spectacular plants than meets the eye. These summer beauties are great as cut flowers, a magnet for pollinating insects and help feed the birds, too.
Here is more information and uses and benefits of Sunflowers from The Home Gardening Association:
Varieties - Not all sunflowers are garden giants; many are compact and ideal for smaller gardens and for growing in containers. There’s a wonderful range of colors too, not just yellow, so ring the changes and grow sunflowers with red, orange or even white flowers for a dramatic garden statement.
Decorative - For dramatic cut flowers that will last around two weeks, sunflowers are a fabulous choice. Van Gogh knew what he was doing when he painted his vase of these glowing beauties.
Wildlife Friendly - Sunflowers need insects to pollinate their flamboyant flowers. That’s why their bright yellow petals resemble flags and are so prominent in the garden. It’s a visual message to butterflies and bees, inviting them to a rich banquet of pollen and nectar. In return the unsuspecting insects transfer pollen from flower to flower to facilitate pollination. It’s a marriage made in heaven and the result is a bountiful supply of sunflower seeds. In the garden, these seeds are vital and very nourishing food for wild birds, in agriculture they are revered for their nutritional content and transformed into foodstuffs. Even pollen free varieties will usually set seed.
Fun facts about sunflowers:
o Most sunflowers originate from the Americas.
o The most common types are annuals as they grow, flower and set seed in the same year.
o The young, developing flowers track the daily movement of the sun (called heliotropism) so that the immature flowers face the sun, hence the name sunflower.
o As the flowers mature, their ability to follow the sun reduces and they tend to face the east to greet the morning sun.
o Sunflowers are great plants for gardens but they are also a valuable crop plant. The seeds are processed to produce sunflower oil or harvested for the food and wild bird industry.
o Sunflowers can be orange, pink, red, burgundy and even white in colour.