close up of sunflowers in a field in India with palm trees in the background
What is usually called the flower is actually a head (formally composite flower) of numerous florets (small flowers) crowded together. The outer florets are the sterile ray florets and can be yellow, maroon, orange, or other colors. The florets inside the circular head are called disc florets, which mature into what are traditionally called "sunflower seeds," but are actually the fruit (an achene) of the plant. The inedible husk is the wall of the fruit and the true seed lies within the kernel. The florets within the sunflower's cluster are arranged in a spiraling pattern. Typically each floret is oriented toward the next by approximately the golden angle, °, producing a pattern of interconnecting spirals where the number of left spirals and the number of right spirals are successive Fibonacci numbers. Typically, there are 34 spirals in one direction and 55 in the other; on a very large sunflower there could be 89 in one direction and 144 in the other. Francisco Pizarro found it in Tahuantinsuyo, Peru, where the natives Incas worshipped the sunflower image as a symbol of the sun god. At the beginning of the 16th century, gold figures of this flower as well as its seeds were brought to Europe. The sunflower is native to the Americas. The evidence thus far is that the sunflower was first domesticated in Mexico, by at least 2600 BC.[4] It may have been domesticated a second time in the middle Mississippi Valley, or been introduced there from Mexico at an early date, as corn (maize) was. During the 18th Century, the use of sunflower oil became very popular in Europe, particularly with members of the Russian Orthodox Church because sunflower oil was one of the few oils that was not prohibited during Lent. Many indigenous American peoples used the sunflower as the symbol of the sun deity, including the Aztecs and the Otomi of Mexico and the Incas in South America. Gold images of the flower, as well as seeds, were taken back to Spain early in the 16th century.
Size: 3466px × 5201px
Location: India
Photo credit: © Brian Perry / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
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