THE RED SUNFLOWER 53 



insolent sometimes ? Have you ever noticed their back 

 hair, how beautifully curled it is ?' : 



4. In Western North America, in that great prairie The prairie 

 region which old geography books used to describe as 



the "Great American Desert," the sunflower grows wild. 

 It is not like the large-headed garden kind, for it has 

 many branches and much smaller heads. Some bot- 

 anists call it a distinct species, but it is perfectly fertile 

 when crossed with the "Russian" variety, and when 

 examined in detail, presents no material difference in 

 the structure of its parts. These wild sunflowers were 

 brought into cultivation by the American Indians in 

 very early times, from Canada to Mexico. They 

 yielded an abundance of oil, "which the Indians, more 

 mindful of their appearance than of their diet, mostly 

 used for anointing their hair and skin." The seeds 

 were parched and ground and made into bread. The 

 state of Kansas, recognizing the sunflower as one of its 

 most characteristic products, long serviceable to man, 

 adopted it as its emblem. 



5. The coloring matters in the sunflower are ob- Coloring 

 viously of more than one kind. Aside from the chloro- 

 phyll, to which the green of the leaves and stems is due, 

 there is the orange or yellow pigment in the rays. This, 



as well as the chlorophyll, can be seen under the micro- 

 scope to be located in definite particles. A closer in- 

 spection usually shows some purplish speckling on the 

 stem, and the prairie sunflower has a dark disk. The 

 dark color of the disk florets, as well as the speckling 

 on the stem, is caused by a coloring matter called antho- 

 cyanin, dissolved in the cell sap. Anthocyanin (from 

 Greek words meaning flower-blue) is a name for a class 

 of pigments which may be pink or blue, and when ex- 

 tracted may often be changed from one color to the 



