Vincent VanGogh’s Sunflowers By Arlene Marturano

Sunflowers have universal appeal. This healthful, happy, native composite has 20–30 ornamental varieties offered from mail–order catalogs such as Park’s Seeds and Burpee or at local garden centers.

Native Americans domesticated the sunflower 4,000 years ago. The sunflower permeated their lives. Some tribes grew sunflower fences around the three sister crops of corn, beans, and squash. Natives used the seeds as nuts and as meal in cakes and bread. The oil flavored food and lubricated their skin and hair. Hulls were recycled into dye for baskets, cloth, and body paint.

Spanish explorers took the sunflower to Western Europe in the 1500s. By the 1600s English cottage and kitchen gardens included sunflowers. Eastern Europe learned of the sunflower from Peter the Great who brought seeds to Russia from Holland in the 1700s. VanGogh’s three–year fascination with the sunflower through painting started a horticulture renaissance for the plant in the 1800s.

Sunflowers thread their influence throughout our lives. Birders purchase black oil seeds in 50 lb bags. Bakers include sunflower oil and seed cookies and breads. Chefs are experimenting with sunflower oil as an alternative to olive oil on salads and in stir–fries. Roasted or raw seeds are a high protein snack. Sun butter, approved by the USDA for the school lunch program, is marketed as an alternative to peanut butter and other tree nuts known to cause allergic reactions. The motion picture industry used French and Italian sunflower fields as the backdrop for the 1969 film Sunflowers starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni.

Plant breeders have manipulated the color, head size, height, maturity date, and pest resistance so the gardener has the opportunity to grow bouquets VanGogh never imagined. The expressive face of sunflowers contains two sets of florets: ray and disc. The outer ray discs may be gold, yellow, white, orange, bronze, red, or burgundy; the hundreds and thousands of center disc florets may be black, chocolate, purple, beige, and green. Each center disc floret has the potential to become a seed. Flower buds are heliotropic and follow the sun from east to west daily. However, once the flower bud opens the flower head faces east. Just as people come in all sizes, there is a sunflower variety to match each member of the family. From infant size Sunflower Elf to toddler high Sundance Kid, Solar Babies, and Teddy Bear. Elementary age children come face to face with Happy Face and Bashful. Adult sized sunflowers at five to six feet in height are VanGogh and Soraya. Mammoth Russian, Cyclops, and Paul Bunyan are for the towering tall. Pollen–free and perennial varieties are also available.

To grow sunflowers in SC requires full sun, warm soil temperature, adequate moisture, and soil pH from 6.0 to 7.3. Sunflowers like nitrogen, a two–inch layer of composted manure show be worked into the topsoil before seeding. Seeds germinate in 7–10 days. Plants grow fastest in the heat of summer and continue flowering until the first frost. The seed heads can be dried and harvested for eating, the birds, and next year’s garden.

Whether sunflowers are planted as a fence, fort, house, or maze; in a container, bed or meadow; as a nectar source for butterflies and hummingbirds, as a pollen feast for ladybugs, or snack food for the family, sunshine and smiles will be growing this summer as well.