Welcome to or welcome back to Bella’s World! My name is Lotus and today we are going to focus on the power of Sunflowers!

Sunflowers (also known as Helianthus) is native to North and South America. It is an annual herb with a rough, hairy stem. A Sunflower is high and broad, coarsely toothed and rough leaves arranged in spirals. The attractive heads of flowers are 7.5 – 15cm wide; the disk flower (the centre of the flower) is either brown, yellow or purple but for sunflowers, it is brown. As you already know, there are yellow petals on a sunflower.

These flowers are valuable economically (which means it can be processed into a variety of products) and ornamentally. The uses for each part of the flower are the following: the leaves are used as fodder (food, especially dried hay or straw), the flowers are have yellow dye, the seeds contain oil and is used for food (it also has olive or almond oil for table use), the oil is used in soap and paints as a lubricant (a substance used to reduce friction) and the seeds can be eaten dried, roasted or ground.

By botanist Lotus