Red Sunflower
An Introduction to the Red Sunflower
A red sunflower is a hybrid that has been developed by experimenting with different kinds of sunflower seed combination. This, like other sunflowers, is an annual plant and belongs to the Asteraceae family and has the distinctive large flower head of the sunflowers.
Red sunflowers make for dramatic borders to gardens and can provide a striking contrast to paler or less intensely colored flowers. These flowers come in a variety of cultivars including the ‘Red Sun’ and the ‘Prtado Red.’ The stem of these flowers can grow to be as tall as three feet and you can use these red sunflowers as dramatic additions to floral arrangements also.
An interesting detail about the sunflower is that what is usually referred to as the flower head is actually a collection of several florets bunched next to each other. The rays or what seem like petals make up the outer florets and these sterile florets come in a range of colors from yellow and red to maroon and orange. The actual head of the sunflower, the central area, also is a composite of disc florets and these mature and become sunflower seeds. In truth these are not the seeds of the plant but the fruits and the actual seeds are inside the husk, which is the real wall of the fruit.
The red sunflower has the same distinctive look one associates with all sunflowers. The florets inside the floral cluster are in a spiral arrangement. The sunflower is a mathematician’s delight because typically each petal is at a 137.5° angle to the next one creating an almost perfect series of interconnected spirals. Moreover, the numbers of left and right spirals are found to be consecutive Fibonacci numbers. It has been found that usually there are 34 spirals tilting to one direction and 55 going the other way. A larger sunflower will have more spirals as can be as high as 89 to 144. It has been found that this pattern allows for the most effective packaging of the seeds and once again Mother Nature establishes that beauty and efficiency can go hand-in-hand.
One other distinctive characteristic of sunflowers is that they show heliotropism when they are in the bud stage and the red sunflower demonstrates this ability too. So, red sunflower bud faces turn to the east at sunrise and move with the path of the sun during the course of the day and end the day by facing the west. At night they re-establish the east facing position and are ready to start the next day all over again. Motor cells called pulvinus enable this to happen and it is a small segment of the stem that allows the buds to move along with the sun. As part of the transition between the bud stage and the full bloom stage, the stem of the red sunflower stiffens of hardens and so there is no heliotropism once the flower has bloomed.
The best way to introduce red sunflowers into your garden is to sow seeds during the spring after there is no lurking danger of a frost. The seeds should be placed ¼ inch deep. If you are unsure about the temperature patterns, you can get your sunflowers started by sowing indoors 3-4 weeks before it is time to plant them outside. The actual germination takes anywhere from 10 to 15 days. Once you have seedlings, you need to make sure that they are a one foot apart in all directions. By providing red sunflowers with adequate care in the early years, you can enjoy a low-maintenance tree for many years to come. A well established sunflower is known to be drought and heat resistant and so it is well worth pampering a red sunflower in the early stages to have a flowering tree which needs minimal care down the road.