Helianthus, is the genus to which the sunflower belongs. It is a combination of two words viz., Helios meaning sun and Anthos meaning flower. It is the national flower of Ukraine and dates back to nearly 3000 years.
The Great Russian ruler Peter, while visiting Holland, was so fascinated by its charm, that he took sunflower seeds back with him to Russia. The first evidence of domestication of the sunflower as a crop comes from the region called Mesoamerica, as early as 2600 B.C. It has been found that the natives of this region consumed the seeds of the sunflower plant as they were rich in calcium. Apart from being used for consumption purposes, the plant had numerous other uses, especially for native Americans - a dye of yellow color was extracted from its petals, oil that was extracted was used for painting the body during religious ceremonies, the stems produced an extraordinarily light fiber, and the time of the blooming of the flowers determined dates in the hunting calendar. A sunflower head is made up of 1,000 to 2,000 individual flowers, that are joined at the base. The large petals that are found around the edge are individual ray flowers, which do not develop into seeds. A single sunflower can have up to 2,000 seeds.
A domesticated sunflower has a single stem and a large seed-head. This is in contrast to the wild variety that is highly branched with small heads and seeds. A sunflower plant can grow from 3 feet to 18 feet tall, and requires only 90 to 100 days to mature.
