RADIATING JOY
There’s one flower that has not been fazed by the heat and sun of this tough Tassie summer. Sunflowers are rising above exhausted garden plants and spreading happiness. If seeing a single sunflower in bloom makes people happy, then a garden full of them radiates joy.
Lynette Wood’s cottage garden at Ulverstone in North-West Tasmania is filled with sunflowers and a joyful place as a result. The sunflowers were planted as a trial and include seeds from the FleuroSun collection. Australian hybridiser Keith White bred these pollen-less sunflowers for those with allergies and as pollen-free cut flowers for flower growers and florists.
FleuroSun sunflowers are compact and much smaller than traditional varieties such as Russian Giant, which can soar to 3m high. While that variety is a top choice for an attempt at the world’s tallest sunflower, tall flowers are often damaged by wind and don’t sit easily in a garden bed with other plants. As a result sunflowers are often grown in the vegie patch.
The FleuroSun varieties include several dwarf forms, which grow to around 30-40cm high. The compact forms grow to around 6080cm while the tall varieties reach around 1.3m. Some were a little higher in Lynette’s garden but the plants were compact, bushy and covered in flowers. Colours include lemon, yellow, cream with a lilac ring and several rust and yellow combinations.
Lynette has planted a very double dwarf sunflower variety from the Sensation range. This compact plant has some pollen among its very double yellow almost cuddly flowers. Lynette has mixed her sunflowers plantings in with other annuals including yellow and orange cosmos (including the variety Bright Eyes) for a sunny mix of cottage flowers.
Long history
For a short-lived plant, the annual sunflower has a long history. Fossil records reveal that sunflowers have been showing their cheery flower faces to the world for at least 47 million years. A fossil of a 47-million-year-old sunflower that was discovered in Argentina shows a large flower head so much like the modern sunflower that it could have been growing in Lynette’s garden.
Fossils of flowers are rare as the soft fleshy parts of plants decay quickly. All that’s usually left behind is an imprint of a leaf or traces of fossilised pollen. Unusually this fossilised sunflower shows the stem, leaves and fine hairs as well as the composition of the flower.
Sunflowers are native to North and Central America but this fossil suggests the sunflower’s ancestors originated on the vast continent of Gondwana. Some 200 million years ago Australia was part of Gondwana along with South America and Africa but the super continent broke up and the landmasses drifted apart. The ancestors of the sunflower went on the bit that ended up as South America!
Grow your own
Sunflowers are easy to grow from seed and are especially rewarding for children to grow. These plants have practical uses as shelter for a vegetable garden or for fast (but temporary) screening. They are also very photogenic.
Sunflower seeds are planted in late spring to grow through summer and into early autumn. Plants reach their full potential in deep rich soil with lots of added organic matter. They need full sun and regular moisture but love heat. Starved of moisture, sunflowers become stunted and flower prematurely. Well watered, sunflowers have few pests and diseases and make a longlasting impact in the summer garden.
Availability
Seeds of pollen-less sunflowers, FleuroSun, are available in spring from Van Diemen Quality Bulbs (1800 179 113 or www.vdqbulbs.com.au). Compact sunflowers in flower in pots may be available at garden centres during summer so shop around.