Sunflower Picture Gallery
 I think of sunflowers as giant daisies. They do belong to the daisy family. The daisy family is also exactly the same family of plants as the aster or also called (no surprise) sunflower family.  Show Large Image in New WindowAll the members of the Asteraceae (also called Compositae) family have flowers that consist of many small flowers within what we see as a flower. The small flowers on the inside of the flower head are the ones that mature into the sunflower seeds. If you have ever seen a sunflower head mature to seed, you'll know that the whole flower head turns into a head of seeds. Each and every seed that you get came from one tiny flower in the original sunflower. The flowers on the outside are what we refer to as the petals and they are sterile. Other well known members of this sunflower family are the gerber daisy (Gerbera) and all the other daisies. This family is one of the largest families of plants.  Show Large Image in New Window More Family Ties The common sunflower is called Helianthus annuus. However, there are many more flowers that look like and are sunflowers in the same genus. The sunflower genus is named Helianthus and it belongs to the much bigger sunflower family. The swamp, California, lakeside, Arizona, woodland, prairie, and longleaf sunflowers all belong with many other species to this genus. What does Helianthus mean? The name Helianthus consists of two original words. Helios which means sun and Anthos which means flower. They are both Greek words. The word anthos was also used in many other plants names like Dianthus and Agapanthus. Return to the top of Sunflower Picture Gallery main page. Return to flower-pictures-online home page.
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