Purple Passion Sunflower

With summer winding down I wanted to creative with my sunflower shots. I edited this one to give the petals a purple and violet like color while... more

by Chad Meyer

Title

Purple Passion Sunflower

Artist

Chad Meyer

Medium

Photograph - Digital Photography

Description

With summer winding down I wanted to creative with my sunflower shots. I edited this one to give the petals a purple and violet like color while darkening the background to make the sunflower pop out more.

Sunflowers are usually tall annual or perennial plants that in some species can grow to a height of 300 centimetres (120 inches) or more. Each "flower" is actually a disc made up of tiny flowers, to form a larger false flower to better attract pollinators. The plants bear one or more wide, terminal capitula (flower heads made up of many tiny flowers), with bright yellow ray florets (mini flowers inside a flower head) at the outside and yellow or maroon (also known as a brown/red) disc florets inside. Several ornamental cultivars of H. annuus have red-colored ray florets; all of them stem from a single original mutant. While the majority of sunflowers are yellow, there are branching varieties in other colours including, orange, red and purple.

The common sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is a large annual forb of the genus Helianthus grown as a crop for its edible oil and seeds. This sunflower species is also used as wild bird food, as livestock forage (as a meal or a silage plant), in some industrial applications, and as an ornamental in domestic gardens. The plant was first domesticated in the Americas. Wild H. annuus is a widely branched annual plant with many flower heads. The domestic sunflower, however, often possesses only a single large inflorescence (flower head) atop an unbranched stem.

The binomial name Helianthus annuus is derived from the Greek Helios 'sun' and anthos 'flower', while the epithet annuus means 'annual' in Latin.

Sunflower seeds were brought to Europe from the Americas in the 16th century, where, along with sunflower oil, they became a widespread cooking ingredient.

Uploaded

December 2nd, 2022