Wild Sunflowers Archives - GoatKeepers Press

Each season seems to have wildflower colors more common than others. Spring is blue and pink. Fall is purple. Summer is yellow with the sunflower parade.

This begins with brown-eyed susans assisted by yellow ironweed. Then the sunflowers begin.

This Helianth sunflower is typical of many wild sunflowers with the smaller disk and single row of yellow rays. The leaves are normally opposite. Another group normally has alternate leaves. The disks are usually yellow.

Lots of Sunflowers

To people driving by the many sunflowers look alike. They have yellow ‘petals’ and a yellow or brown center. They are usually tall with big leaves. Even now the fields of tickseed sunflower are just another in the sunflower parade.

If you stop and look, these plants are not all the same. They are alike in that these ‘flowers’ are really flower heads with bright ray flowers surrounding a disk of small, tubular flowers. But these are different on different plants too.

Look at the leaves. Some pairs of leaves are on opposite sides of the stem. Other leaves aren’t in pairs but alternate on their way up the stem. Some have smooth edges, some tiny teeth, others large teeth.

This sunflower is more like the grown sunflowers with the larger brown disk and short rays. Many of the wild sunflowers produce edible seeds that are too small to bother with except for the birds.

And the Flower Heads

Some ray flowers are short and broad. Others are long and thin. There are notches in the ends of others. Even their colors are different as some are very yellow and others have orange tints.

The center flowers can be yellow or brown. They put out stamens covered with pollen. Most of these are yellow, but not all. Some make a mound. Others are flat.

Naming Sunflowers

I’ve taken pictures of the different sunflowers for years. Most of them have names like 1 Sunflower, 2 Sunflower.

There are easy ones like Prairie dock with its enormous basal leaves. Tickseed sunflower is another one as the plant has a tapered look, the leaves have big lobes and the ray flowers are broad and thin.

The rest of them are still on my list to be identified. There is a key, several in fact. They haven’t helped much. This year I am looking up pictures to compare with my pictures. Perhaps I will spend some time setting up the pictures to put on iNaturalist in the hopes someone more knowledgeable than I will know what they are.

One other thing I will do is enjoy the sunflower parade even as the asters try to take over and signal the end of summer.

Admitting mistakes is hard to do. It’s especially hard when it is a public mistake, even when it was an accidental mistake.

I’m not a botanist, only an amateur. I study books, pictures, descriptions to identify the plants I find. There are huge folders of pictures labeled unknown on my computer.

Sunflowers are notoriously difficult to identify. I came across one that seemed so different, it had to be easy to identify.

I suppose I had wondered why these ray petals were spaced. The Helianthus sunflowers like the Ashy Sunflower have closely spaced and overlapping ray petals. Texas Green Eyes has the spaces between the rays.

Overconfidence breeds mistakes.

I studied various sources and decided this plant was the Ashy Sunflower and have believed this for ten years. And been mistaken for ten years.

There is an old saying that none are so blind as those who will not see. That was me.

The sunflowers are coming into bloom again. And I am taking pictures of them again. And putting most into the unknown folder again.

Meeting this old friend was pleasant until I took pictures and realized something I had blindly overlooked: the leaf arrangement.

So many of the sunflowers blooming in mid to late summer have opposite leaves. I assumed this plant did too. But, if you look like I finally did, these leaves are alternate. Texas Green Eyes has alternate leaves. Ashy Sunflower has opposite leaves.

Simple plant leaves are grouped into opposite where the leaves stick out across from each other, whorled where more than one leaf sticks out across from each other, basal where the leaves are from a central ground source and alternate where one leaf goes off followed by another in a different direction further up the stem.

Ashy Sunflowers have opposite leaves. My familiar plant has alternate leaves. It is not an Ashy Sunflower.

What’s really pretty about the Texas Green Eyes leaf is the scalloped edge. Most leaves have points on the teeth on the edges.

Admitting mistakes believed true for years is very hard. I didn’t believe what I saw. I checked other plants. The leaves were alternate. I was wrong and I had posted this mistake, insisting I was right.

My plant is a Texas Green Eyes. The pictures on www.missouriplants.com make this obvious. I have fixed this mistake in my botany project.

Everyone makes mistakes about lots of things. We can believe these mistakes for years. We blindly believe them even when presented with evidence we are wrong.

Admitting mistakes may be hard, but changing our mistaken beliefs seems to be even harder.