Sunflower Facts for Kids

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Sunflower Facts

You most likely think of a sunflower as a beautiful yellow flower, but did you know you can eat it too? You can even make it into paper! Sunflower has a lot of uses and is more than a pretty face.

HOW IT GROWS
Sunflower starts as a small seed, like the one you're familiar with eating. Planted in the spring, the flower grows over the summer. The stalk grows to be very tall. Some sunflowers only grow 12 inches and some grow to be 16 feet tall! Most flowers grow about 6 feet tall, that's taller than most people!
Like its name, the sunflower seeks the sun, which is called heliotropism. After the flower blooms, the flower faces the sun until the stalk is fully grown, and then the flower faces east.

DID YOU KNOW

• Sunflowers are native to North America (that means they first grew there). In Arizona and New Mexico, there are clues that the sunflower was used around 5,000 years ago. It was an important plant and eaten before corn.
• The world's tallest sunflower grew to 30 feet and 1 inch tall! It was grown in 2014 by Hans-Peter Schiffer in Germany.  
• Sunflowers have been to space! In 2012, US astronaut Don Pettit brought sunflower seeds to space and grew it. 
• You can eat the seeds, the flower buds, use the stalk to make paper (see the Activities to try it), and even use the flower head (with seeds removed) as a scrubbing brush!

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