_Helianthus giganteus_
_Flower-heads_--Several, on long, rough-hairy peduncles; 1-1/2 to 2-1/4
in. broad; 10 to 20 pale yellow neutral rays around a yellowish disk
whose florets are perfect, fertile. _Stem:_ 3 to 12 ft. tall,
bristly-hairy, usually branching above, often reddish; from a perennial,
fleshy root. _Leaves:_ Rough, firm, lance-shaped, saw-toothed, sessile.
_Preferred Habitat_--Low ground, wet meadows, swamps.
_Flowering Season_--August-October.
_Distribution_--Maine to Nebraska and the Northwest Territory, south to
the Gulf of Mexico.
To how many sun-shaped golden disks with outflashing rays might not the
generic name of this clan (_helios_ = the sun, _anthos_ = a flower) be
as fittingly applied: from midsummer till frost the earth seems given up
to floral counterparts of his worshipful majesty. If, as we are told,
one ninth of all flowering plants in the world belong to the composite
order, of which more than sixteen hundred species are found in North
America north of Mexico, surely more than half this number are made up
after the daisy pattern, the most successful arrangement known, and the
majority of these are wholly or partly yellow. Most conspicuous of the
horde are the sunflowers, albeit they never reach in the wild state the
gigantic dimensions and weight that cultivated, dark-brown centred
varieties produced from the common sunflower have attained. For many
years the origin of the latter flower, which suddenly shone forth in
European gardens with unwonted splendor, was in doubt. Only lately it
was learned that when Champlain and Segur visited the Indians on Lake
Huron’s eastern shores about three centuries ago, they saw them
cultivating this plant, which must have been brought by them from its
native prairies beyond the Mississippi--a plant whose stalks furnished
them with a textile fibre, its leaves fodder, its flowers a yellow dye,
and its seeds, most valuable of all, food and hair-oil! Early settlers
in Canada were not slow in sending home to Europe so decorative and
useful an acquisition. Swine, poultry, and parrots were fed on its rich
seeds. Its flowers, even under Indian cultivation, had already reached
abnormal size. Of the sixty varied and interesting species of wild
sunflowers known to scientists, all are North American.
Moore’s pretty statement,
“As the sunflower turns on her god when he sets
The same look which she turn’d when he rose,”
lacks only truth to make it fact. The flower does not travel daily on
its stalk from east to west. Often the top of the stem turns sharply
toward the light to give the leaves better exposure, but the presence or
absence of a terminal flower affects its action not at all.