If I were to recall a sunflower from memory I’d draw a circle of brown seeds and frame those with large gold petals.
But here I was staring at the green sharp points in the center of this arrangement and wanting details.
Cursory searches online revealed the center is comprised of disk florets arranged in a spiral and the gold petals are ray florets. Florets are flowers all on their own but collectively form the sunflower which is a composite flower or flowerhead. Those green ones could get pollinated and become fertilized florets.
This tangent inspired breaking out the Visual Dictionary which has far superior graphics than most every image search online.
Well all this said, I’ll certainly be looking more closely at sunflowers from here out.
Learn something new every day.
Whoa. I don’t think I’ve ever really looked at a sunflower before. Which is funny because I’ve been growning them for years. AND, in my grief fog, I realized on Monday that I had not planted sunflowers this year. I looked up to see if it was too late. It’s not. So that’s what I’m doing this weekend.
That’s most excellent to hear the window is still open! (I had put a sunflower emoji here but it turns out my site doesn’t currently support them…)