This late spring/early summer we actually had two sunflowers growing in the yard. We feed sunflower seeds to the wild birds and we always get the little straggly attempts at sunflowers growing–but this year we actually had two that made it all the way to mature plants (though they didn’t have a lot of seeds to them).

Sunflowers are one of my favorite flowers mainly because of how they go from having hundreds of little pollen tubes to having hundreds of seeds (and it can seem like it happens overnight).

 

This one was in the yard, but had to be given help in standing (also to keep the dogs from trampling it).

The second one was closer to the house, and actually ended up being a double-header.

This one was taken less than a week after the first one at the top–it’s amazing how quickly it opened and seeds started to fill in.

The double header was lagging about two-three weeks behind it in terms of blooming.

But when it did finally bloom–the flowers pointed in opposite directions. This was about as much as these two bloomed–they never fully opened.

The other one though…..

Once the seeds started to fill in–the petals started to get slightly thinner.

A nice little look at the micro world of sunflower seeds.

 

This one makes it look like it has worms crawling through the many little pollen tubes.

A zoomed out look at the flower and seeds.

Still another zoom out look at the seeds.

 

Hopefully next year we will have several more sunflowers actually grow in the yard, and maybe I can see about collecting the seeds and starting our own little sunflower patch to help feed the birds in the winter instead of going to the store and buying seed all the time.