The Sunflower. 155 



first mention wc have of the annual Sunflower in England, is by 

 Gerard, who notices it in the year 1596, under the name of the 

 Flower of the Sun or the Marigold of Peru. He tells us that 

 it had grown to the height of fourteen feet in his garden at Hol- 

 born, producing flowers that measured sixteen inches over, and 

 adds, that in Spain, it has been known to reach the height of 

 twenty-four feet. The French call this flower Soleil and Tourne- 

 sol, from a vulgar error that the blossoms turn to the sun ; where- 

 as the flowers branch out on all sides of the plant, and those 

 which face the east at the opening of the day, never turn to the 

 west at the close of it. They have been seen pointing towards 

 every bearing of the compass on the same plant It is unfit for 

 the small parterre, but when planted among shrubs or young 

 trees, or on the borders of woods, its imitative suns shine to advan- 

 tage. It is a flower we would recommend to young students in 

 botany, since its great size will enable them to understand the class 

 and order in which it is placed, better than any other plants of the 

 same class. Linneeus adopted the term Syngenesia, a generat- 

 ing together, for this class, which, as it includes all the com- 

 pound flowers, from the modest daisy to the gay dahlia, forms one 

 of the most interesting classes. It contains a natural order of 

 plants, perfectly distinct from any others which the vegetable cre- 

 ation presents to our view ; consequently their arrangement in 

 the artificial system of the illustrious Swede is peculiar to them- 

 selves. It could not be defined by the number of stamens and 

 pistils, since all the numerous genera contain the same, which 

 made it necessary to find other characters in the flowers, so as to 

 form the basis of subdivision. For this purpose Linnseus adopt- 

 ed the polygamy or intermixture of sexes in the florets. The 

 characters of the class Syngenesia, being of a decidedly different 

 nature from other flowers, may be easily known. It consists, 

 first, in the congeration of the anthers, which is uniform through- 

 out all its numerous genera ; and secondly, that more than one 

 floret is always contained in each calyx ; this is sufficient to 

 determine any plant belonging to the class Syngenesia. The 

 Sunflower, more particularly the single one, presents you with a 

 clear idea of the class and order to which it belongs, since you 

 see the parts on a large scale. The common receptacle sup- 

 porting all the numerous florets on its surface, each of these 

 florets is in fact a separate monopetalous flower, having within 



