Today's stem is one that I've always associated with summer and my mom's garden: the sunflower. Each year, my mom would plant some sunflowers and give custody of one to me and one to my brother. Naturally, this became a contest to see whose could grow taller, as most things between me and my brother became. Every year at some point the sunflowers would become much taller than the two of us, so it would be hard to figure out who was winning, which spawned more arguing. In my mom's defense, if she hadn't given us the sunflowers, we probably would have been arguing over something else, so at least this way the garden looked nice.

Summertime means sunflowers ... and arguing about them

I didn't realize it until I read it in Botanica, but sunflowers are a genus of the daisy family. The heads of daisies and sunflowers both have ray florets that extend outward and form the petals, and many disc florets, which comprise the middle. It's the disc florets in the middle that grow to become the tasty seeds. A floret is really just a small flower, so that means that sunflowers and daisies are composed of many flowers, which is why they're called composite flowers. Helianthus annuus, the formal name for the common sunflower, is a member of the helianthus genus. Helia, meaning sun, and anthus, meaning flower, gives us the name sunflower. Sunflowers need a lot of sun, and young sunflowers will actually track the sun as it moves across the sky, hence the name. Older sunflowers, more set in their ways, will just face east. And no, there does not seem to be a Greek hero who died and made a sunflower, or who was transformed into a sunflower, or who was named Sunflower, or anything like that. Sunflowers seem to have a pretty peaceful back story. Unless you ask me and my brother. -Chris Thanks to Botanica an illustrated guide to 10,000 garden plants, for information about common sunflowers and the helianthus genus. Botanica can be found in the back offices of Shinoda Design Center, next to some unrelated books on horses and beauty products. Thanks also to John Henry's Floral Fan Deck and wikipedia for additional information. John Henry's Floral Fan Deck is on sale at Shinoda Design Center. Wikipedia is not for sale, but can be found at www.wikipedia.org.