Mutant Sunflower

[Mintilou]

Can anyone tell me if it is natural for a sunflower to have several flower heads on a single plant? My plant has suddenly sprouted four new ones as well as the original! How common is this??

Thanks, Anna.

[Newt]

Hi Anna,

Yes, there is a multi headed sunflower. Is this what you see?
https://www.djroger.com/sunflower__multi.htm

Newt

[stoyancho]

Very interesting, I didn't know that.

Mintilou,
Does it happen with all sunflowers or just one ? - can you take a picture and publish it here.

[JennyC]

I read in an old Organic Gardening and Farming that all our modern sunflowers are bred from an old multi-headed wild variety. The magazine also said there can occasionally be "throwbacks."

[dinker]

Hello to everyone there are different types of sunflowers Here in Kansas they grow wild. The giant ones are usually planted .

[cynthia_h]

dinker,

one of the most beautiful stages of my cross-country drive in August 1991 was driving through Kansas on I-70.

Fields of sunflowers. Roadsides of sunflowers. Tall, short, yellow, orange, red-streaked. Miles and miles of sunflowers.

Total beauty.

Cynthia H.
USDA Zone 9, Sunset Zone 17

[dinker]

I live about 42 miles from I-70 but just about everywhere you go you see sunflowers .My favorite time is spring early summer I love to go to the pasture or as some call them meadows on the mule (4 wheel type) there are so many types of wild flowere's it looks like a giant flower garden. It's sad to say but place's like that are on a decline even here. people buy the large pasture land then split it up or the late owners kids cant sell it so they split it up for people to build houses on .