Natural Notes: Native Sunflowers
September is the month of yellow, and for gardeners the easy-to-grow and popular choice of flower is the Annual Sunflower ( Helianthus annuus ) which adorns garden borders and roadsides across the Chicago Region. Numerous cultivars of this urban weed have been developed, and the source of commercial sunflowers and sunflower oil are derived from the Annual Sunflower (figure 1). Figure 1: Annual Sunflower growing at the Taylor Street Farms community garden in Chicago. But prior to European settlement, the Chicago region was largely absent of this tall and showy late-summer wildflower, whose range historically included the south-central United States into the plains and grasslands just to the east of the Rocky Mountains. Instead, the prairie landscape of Northern Illinois would have been adorned with several species of native sunflowers and sunflower-like plants (figure 2). Figure 2: Although virtually absent of the notorious Annual Sunflower, the prairie landscape of N