The sunflower
๐ In short
The sunflower is a tall plant with a big yellow flower that looks like the sun, with bright yellow petals around a brown middle. It can be three meters tall, taller than your dad! Its seeds are eaten and pressed for cooking oil.
๐คฉ Did you know?
- There are more than 60 kinds of sunflower.
- An ordinary plant is between one and three meters tall.
- Some black seeds are 50% oil.
- Sunflower oil is one of the most produced cooking oils in the world.
๐ Find out more
๐ It follows the sun
Young sunflower heads turn towards the sun and follow it from east to west during the day. When they're grown, they usually face east and stay that way.
๐ One flower made of many
What looks like one big flower is really hundreds of tiny flowers packed together! And each little flower in the middle becomes a seed.
๐ก An amazing pattern
If you look at the middle of a sunflower, you'll see the seeds arranged in beautiful spirals turning two ways, like a precise math drawing.
๐ฏ Seeds and oil
People love eating roasted sunflower seeds. A healthy cooking oil is pressed from them, and birds eat the seeds too.
๐ธ More pictures
๐งฉ Test yourself
1 Why is the sunflower called that?
2 What is pressed from sunflower seeds?
3 There are more than ?? kinds of sunflower.
4 Which picture shows โThe sunflowerโ?
๐ณ Discover more
๐ท Picture sources: Wikimedia Commons
- Fir0002 ยท GFDL 1.2
- Muhammad Mahdi Karim ยท GFDL 1.2
- Foto: Jonn Leffmann ยท CC BY 4.0
- Salil Kumar Mukherjee ยท CC BY-SA 4.0
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