How do sunflowers spread?

[john gault]

I was watching squirrels and birds eat at the feeder this morning and started wondering about how certain seeds are spread. I know some types are requried to go through the gut of animals, but I'm guessing most seeds that get eaten are gone forever.

There are so many different type of seeds, but for now I'm just wondering about the sunflower seed. When the squirrels eat it all that's left is the hull and the actual seed must be destroyed by the squirrels teeth and gut, so squirrels don't spread them.

But I've never seen the birds eat one, but I could have just missed it. I know some birds do crack nuts, but assuming the local birds here eat the whole seed, hull and all. That makes me wonder doesn't the seed get destroyed by the gut along with the hull? Is there a book that talks about this?

I'm guessing that the seeds that are spread by animals are specialized and actually the vast majority are not spread this way.

Are sunflowers one type that can't be spread via the gut of an animal? Or does it take a certain species of animal to spread the seeds? I know in my garden that they spread simply by falling on the ground. (I don't always harvest all of them and the ones I just leave alone soon have other seeds sprouting all around it.

[digitS']

I'm not trying to be facetious here, John, but I'd never seen a field of sunflowers until recent years. I guess I'd never visited the right parts of the midwest at the proper time to have noticed them.

Sunflowers are still not a very common crop here. Where I first noticed the types that are in commercial use was along the railroad tracks. They are now everywhere! So, I can say that train cars spread them.

For many years, my dad fed only sunflower and niger seed in his backyard. His neighborhood didn't have squirrels and he was trying to not feed the English sparrows. They paid little attention to his offerings but the house finches, chickadees and juncos were out there a lot.

I grow sunflowers in my garden and those birds plus chipping sparrows show up.

It seems kind of amazing to me that a tiny bird like a chickadee can eat a sunflower seed. That is what they have a very special interest in and I don't think they ever shell it first. With some grit, I suppose their gizzards just grind it up. Surely, they can't be filling up on these seeds day after day just to have them pass thru their gut.

Don't know about books on the spread of wild/invasive plant seeds. It seems like there should be some.

Steve

[john gault]

I'm not trying to be facetious here, John, but I'd never seen a field of sunflowers until recent years. I guess I'd never visited the right parts of the midwest at the proper time to have noticed them.

Sunflowers are still not a very common crop here. Where I first noticed the types that are in commercial use was along the railroad tracks. They are now everywhere! So, I can say that train cars spread them.

For many years, my dad fed only sunflower and niger seed in his backyard. His neighborhood didn't have squirrels and he was trying to not feed the English sparrows. They paid little attention to his offerings but the house finches, chickadees and juncos were out there a lot.

I grow sunflowers in my garden and those birds plus chipping sparrows show up.

It seems kind of amazing to me that a tiny bird like a chickadee can eat a sunflower seed. That is what they have a very special interest in and I don't think they ever shell it first. With some grit, I suppose their gizzards just grind it up.
Steve

That does bring up an interesting question in my mind -- Are cultivated sunflowers better or not at spreading? Although, I know that opens the door to all the various forms of sunflower, both natural and cultivated.

As for the birds, I'm guess most do eat the seeds whole and let their gizzard do the chewing for them, but I was thinking about parrot-type birds that seem to have a proclivity toward shelling their seeds -- Although, I guess that's kind of rare in the bird world and may even be just unique to them.?

Surely, they can't be filling up on these seeds day after day just to have them pass thru their gut.
Steve

That's exactly what I was thinking as I was thinking about birds eating seeds; surely they must be getting more energy/nutrients out of the seeds than just what little bit they can extract from the hull.

[!potatoes!]

what about the ones that slip through the cracks - the ones the hurrying squirrels drop, etc.? or maybe it's the seeds that get stored by mice/ants/...whatever else may store a seed, sprouting despite the store-er's intention...

in various sunflowers in native ranges, anyway? is the classic big sunflower an ancestral form, or are most of the sunflowers we see human-bred to some extent? I think, with some of the things that human plant-breeding activities have changed significantly from their earlier forms, it's hard to say things are generally spread by anything besides people...not sure how much sunflowers in particular fit that bill, though. they've definitely been an intentional crop for long enough for it to be possible.

[digitS']

There are so very, very many in the sunflower family!

Jesting, botanists making light of the difficulties to identify the different species, sometimes calling them [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damned_yellow_composite]"damn yellow composite (DYC)."[/url]
You can click on those words and see that I'm not making this up .

I've read that other than humans and certain microbes, I suppose, our food plants are the most successful species on Earth. I guess that must be true. I mean, how many wheat plants or rice plants are there each year?! Sunflowers may be making their bid, too.

Probably, this has gotten to the point where we can't really be sure whether humans are manipulating plants or the other way around.

Little story - somewhat off-topic. Along the edge of my larger veggie garden lies a 4" sprinkler line. Often, the pipes are pulled apart and just lying there. If we have rain, they may not be put together for a couple weeks.

When the pipes are fitted together again I was perplexed to find what appeared to be seeds in them! They seemed to be cherry seeds but nearby cherry trees were a good 50 yards away. Many of the seeds had holes in them and were hollow.

I had to blame this on field mice but could hardly imagine a mouse carrying a seed 60 or 100 yards. The mystery was solved when I realized robins were carrying the cherries to posts near the pipes, eating the cherries and the seeds sat on the posts or dropped to the ground. The mice were hiding the seeds inside the sprinkler pipes! I suppose there is some ecological principle involved here.

Steve

[rainbowgardener]

Many plants survive by producing many times as many seeds as they need for the next generation, sometimes thousands of times as many. So maybe 99% of the seeds are eaten, land in inhospitable places, etc etc. But what is left is plenty. So in the case of the sunflowers, birds drop lots of the seeds (look around the feeder!), squirrels drop some, and plant some (bury them for later and then don't come back), mice store some. We feed sunflower seeds to the birds and I always have a hundred or more little sunflower plants come up from what the birds and squirrels missed or stored.

I have a huge trumpet creeper vine. It gets covered in flowers and many of those flowers eventually become big seed pods. The pods are very hard and tight and don't open up until we've had a few freezes. Once they open up, birds (finches, cardinals, and others), sit there and pull seeds out of the pod one by one. They do that all winter. You would think there'd never be another trumpet creeper. But each of those pods has easily 100 paper thin seeds in it. Some of them clearly make it, because I now have trumpet creeper popping up all over my yard!

[tomc]

With a seed that has fleshy outsides (oh like asparagus), I beleive the bird eats the fruity part and lets the hard seed drop.

I'm posing thats why you find volunteer asparagus along fence rows. IE Bird grooming stations. The seed never makes it into the gut.

For volunteer sunflower I expect something fourlegged cheeks the seed and caches the seed and then does not get the seed the following spring. Ditto, the seed never actually makes it through the gut.

Tomato and rose (seed) are perfectly viable after passing through a gut.

So, some do and some don't.

[Bobberman]

Many of the garden seeds never make it through the winter because of not just the freeze but the wet and freeze together. I have a few sunflower come up the following year that I did not plant from the year before. Now a morning glory seems to last the winter and come up a a very high rate all summer! I am thinking the high water content of the sunflower hampers its freeze thaw ability!

[lily51]

Interesting question. I think they are spread by dropping on ground, by the
Plant itself or by birds and other animals.
There was a plan at one time around here to grow sunflowers as a crop, I think for their oil. Problem was getting them to a processor and still make a profit; building a facility was cost prohibitive also.

There's something about a whole field of sunflowers that makes people smile.

[DoubleDogFarm]

I blame "Soil" for the seed ball bombing.

Eric

[john gault]

When I first thought of this I didn't consider wind; I guess because you don't normally think of those big sunflower seeds being blown around. But then I remember reading about how some islands have been "seeded" by various organisms, including things like snakes and lizards via hurricanes.

Here's just one example, but I've read other more remarkable accounts. So I guess heavy winds and rains can do a lot in spreading the sunflower, but I'm sure there's also some other ways no one knows about.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/11/081125-bats-hurricanes.html

[lorax]

[url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damned_yellow_composite]"damn yellow composite (DYC)."[/url]

LOL! We also call them Dratted Yellow Asters (DYA)....

John, I always figured sunflowers (you're talking Helianthus, right) to be mammal-transmitted, as in the squirrels and chipmunks and mice and whatnot that hoard seed. They never remember all of their caches, and so there are always things sprouting up in the spring.

[FOSR]

Here in Columbus we have a junkyard, and a vehicle storage lot across the street, both infested with volunteer sunflowers, it's a funny sight.

I've tried several times to grow sunflowers but every critter is out to destroy them.