The American Botanist 



VOL. XIII. 



JOLIET, ILL., OCTOBER, 1907. 



No. 2 



(Si 



OUR PRAIRIE SUNFLOWERS. 



BY WILLARD N. CLUTE. 



THE name Hclimithus, by which the sunflower family is 

 known among botanists, was very evidently given to the 

 plants in allusion to the resemblance of their flower-heads to 

 the sun, for when the word is dismembered it is seen to consist 

 of the Greek words hclios, the sun and anthos a flower. The 

 circular clusters of disk florets and their surrounding halo of 

 yellow ray-flowers are certainly near enough in appearance 

 to our conventional idea of the sun to merit being named 

 for it. and it is quite possible that the two kinds of flowers 

 found in each head, the ray-flowers and disk flowers, have 

 also received names from this resemblance, but the plants 

 have other traits that link them with the god of day and with 

 other forms of blossoms might still be sunflowers. Many of 

 them set leaf and flower to face the sun in the early morning 

 and as he slowly describes his arc through the sky they as stead- 

 ily follow and face him. Since one is supposed to grow like 

 what he contemplates, it is pleasing to fancy that this turning 

 toward the sun through the long ages of sunflower evolution 

 has been the determining factor in giving form to the blossoms. 



The sunflowers were tlie original fire-worshippers. Few 

 plants, at least in our part of the world, love light and warmth 

 more. By right they should all come into full bloom on mid- 

 summer day instead of opening their blossoms so late in the 

 year that there is barely time for ripening their seeds before 

 frost. Theirs is the full enjoyment of summer, however, and 

 during the hot season they wax strong and vigorous — putting 

 up their tall stems that are later to be crowned with their 



