Sunflowers & their connection to nature’s numbering system, a few facts, and trivia

 

In the scientific world, many experts felt that at least 4,000 to 5,000 years ago, Sunflowers were a cultivated food crop in what is now the eastern United States. It was believed that Sunflower farming spread south from eastern North America to Mexico. However, another later study discovered Sunflower plant remains in a dry cave in Mexico that were at least from the year 2600 BC leading to a hypothesis that assumed the farming of Sunflowers began in Mexico and moved northward. The new Mexico finding was later questioned by a Smithsonian Institution expert. He argued that the remains said to be from 2600 BC were incorrectly identified as Sunflowers.  What I know is that according to the Creation story by The respected Iroquois scholar, John Arthur Gibbon, the first Sunflower was planted by Sky Woman’s son, the Right-handed twin. He planted it at his grandmother’s house.

According to Arthur C. Parker in The New York State Museum Bulletin # 144, November 1910: the Iroquois used Sunflower oil in great quantities, and they also ate the hulled seeds that were an excellent source of nutrition. The oil was prepared by bruising the ripe seeds in a mortar, heating the mass for a half hour, and then throwing it into boiling water until most of the oil had been separated from the pulp. The water was cooled and strained and the oil skimmed off of the top and stored. This Sunflower oil was also used for conditioning their hair. When I first moved into my Uncle Joe’s house in Kanatakon several years ago, a single Sunflower grew in front of the porch. It was really beautiful and quite large. I remember wanting to dry the head for the seeds, but a squirrel beat me to the flower head. There was a windstorm that morning, so I looked out the door to check out the Sunflower. It was bent over, and there was a squirrel eating the seeds! When I went out to claim my seed head that squirrel picked it up and climbed into the tree next to my house.


Sunflowers, (Helianthus annuus) are annual plants native to the Americas. They possess a large flowering head. Sunflower stems can grow as high as 10 ft, and the flower head can reach 12 inches in diameter. The flowers contain large edible seeds. What we call the flower is actually a head of numerous florets (small flowers) crowded together. The outer florets are the sterile ray florets and can be yellow, maroon, orange, and a variety of other colors. The florets inside the circular head are called disc florets, which mature into what are traditionally called  the “Sunflower seeds.” The seeds are actually the fruit of the plant. The inedible husk is the wall of the fruit and the edible seed lies within the kernel. The florets within the sunflower’s cluster are arranged in a spiral pattern. Typically each floret is oriented toward the next by what is called the golden ratio, which produces a pattern of interconnecting spirals where the number of left spirals and the number of right spirals are successive Fibonacci numbers. There are usually 34 spirals in one direction and 55 in the other. On a very large sunflower, there could be 89 in one direction and 144 in the other. The reason for such a patterning is because in this way, the seeds can be most efficiently packaged.


Fibonacci numbers and the golden mean:

The Fibonacci numbers are Nature’s numbering system. This system appears everywhere in Nature, from the leaf arrangement in plants, to the pattern of the florets of a flower, the bracts of a pinecone, and in the scales of a pineapple. Fibonacci numbers apply to the growth of every living thing, including a single cell, a Sunflower, a grain of wheat, a hive of bees, and even includes all of mankind. They appear everywhere in Nature.  The Fibonacci sequence is 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, and so on. It begins with the number 1, and each new term from there is the sum of the previous two. The limit ratio between the terms is .618034... an irrational number variously called the “golden ratio” or the “divine proportion.” Today, in math, it is called Phi after the architect Phidias, who designed the Parthenon.


According to Frederick A Hottes, “All of our human senses, including hearing, touch, taste, vision and pain receptors, not only have a spiral physiology, but they also have response curves that are logarithmic meaning (they have a fibonacci structure). If you look closely at the face of a Sunflower, you will see these numerical arrangements.


The golden mean/ratio number is closely connected with the Fibonacci.  Adolf Zeising (1854) appears to have been the first to propose the idea that in the golden ratio “ is contained the fundamental principle of all formation striving to beauty and totality in the realm of nature and in the field of the pictorial arts.” Adolf Zeising, whose main interests were mathematics and philosophy, found the golden ratio expressed in the arrangement of branches along the stems of plants and in the veins of leaves. He extended his research to the skeletons of animals and the branching of their veins and nerves, to the proportions of chemical compounds and the geometry of crystals, even to the use of proportion in artistic endeavors. In these phenomena he saw the golden ratio operating as a universal law.  Zeising wrote in 1854: The Golden Ratio is a universal law in which is contained the ground-principle of all formative striving for beauty and completeness in the realms of both nature and art, and permeates, as a paramount spiritual ideal, all structures, forms and proportions, whether cosmic or individual, organic or inorganic, acoustic or optical; finds its fullest realization in the human form.


The following is a Website where fairly simple examples to help you to understand the Golden mean can be found (some are even helpful for young people):


http://www.learner.org/interactives/renaissance/fibonacci/

Sunflowers and art: There are pieces of artwork in galleries around the world that have become nearly synonymous with the artists name and the subject. The various paintings of Sunflowers and Vincent Van Gogh is a perfect example of this. Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflower paintings have been duplicated many times by various artists (although none have ever reached the vivacity and intensity of Van Gogh’s paintings). When looking at Van Gogh’s paintings, one begins to notice aspects that seem to flow from one piece to another. The colors he used, were vibrant and expressed emotions typically associated with the life of sunflowers: bright yellows of the full bloom to arid browns of wilting and death; all of the stages woven through these polar opposites are presented. Perhaps this very technique is what draws one into his paintings; the fulfillment of seeing all angles of the spectrum of life and in turn reaching a deeper understanding of how all living things are tied together.


Although Van Gogh’s sunflower paintings are very similar, each stands out as its own unique work of art. Van Gogh began painting Sunflowers after he left Holland for France in pursuit of creating an artistic community. The firsts were created to decorate his friend Paul Gauguin’s bedroom. The majority of Van Gogh’s sunflowers in vases were created in Arles, France during 1888-1889. Van Gogh’s paintings of sunflowers have altered mankind’s perspective of art and life. His paintings captivate the mind and leave you astounded in their simplistic beauty. The flowing wilted stems and the burst of lovely yellow draws ones attention around the painting, without disrupting the balance of the piece. His paintings are often duplicated but never reach the pure power of Van Gogh’s.


Some Sunflower trivia and facts:

Sunflowers grown commercially for the oil that is pressed from the seeds include ‘Peredovik’, ‘Progress’ and ‘Rostov’. (2) Sunflowers follow the sun. In the morning the flowers will face the sun, and as the day goes by the flowers will move to face the sun as it moves across the sky. (3) If a Sunflower is grown in partial shade they will may stretch so far trying to face the sun, they because of their great weight, will fall over if not supported. (4) Bees and butterflies frequent the flowers. (5) All Sunflowers are good and long lasting as cut flowers. (6) Birds (especially finches and cardinals) and squirrels will help themselves to the seeds.

(7) Sunflowers are said to be allelopathic meaning their roots give off a chemical that inhibits the growth of other, nearby plants. (8) It is the State flower of Kansas.

(9) When buying Sunflower seeds for feeding the birds, it is best to get the more nutritious black-oil sunflower seeds, not the striped ones. (10) Some individuals can be allergic to Sunflower foliage and may develop a skin rash from contact.

(11) The word Sunflower comes from the Greek ‘Helianthus’, ‘Helios’ meaning ‘sun’ and ‘anthos’ meaning flower and it is Greek mythology which provides us with the story of the origin of the Sunflower. It is about a water nymph called Clytie who fell in love with the God of the Sun, Apollo (or Helius). She was so much in love that she would sit on the ground and stare up at the sun all day long but Apollo never noticed her. The other Gods took pity on her and turned her into a Sunflower. Her legs became the Sunflower’s stem, her face became the flower, and her golden hair the sepals/petals. Even in the form of a Sunflower Clytie continues to watch her love and that is why the sunflower’s face turns to follow the path of the sun. (12) In June 1996, the Sunflower was chosen to symbolize a world free of nuclear weapons. After Ukraine gave up its last nuclear warhead, defense ministers from Russia, the Ukraine and the U.S. met on a former Ukrainian missile base. They celebrated by scattering sunflower seeds and planting sunflowers. Six months later William Perry received a letter from the U.S. Ambassador to the Ukraine. He sent him some Sunflower seeds harvested from those same Sunflowers, which had been planted at the missile base. William Perry took those seeds and gave them to his grandson to plant at his school as a symbol that he and his grandchildren would not have to live with the same dark nuclear cloud that’ had hung over his head for so many years. Not only has the Sunflower been chosen to represent a nuclear free world, it is also used by many green parties around the world today to symbolize a clean, healthy, and better world.

 

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