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Albert_136
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Identification of sunflower grown from wild bird seed

One website says there are 233 different sunflowers. Wikipedia, a few minutes ago, said on only 70. Nevertheless, there are many sunflower.


The one I am interested in hasn't bloomed yet so a photo is probably not yet indicated. It is from wild bird seed. Others from the same sack of bird seed are quite different. It is now taller than the eve of the house. It will have multiple blossoms.

What websites are best for sunflower questions? In addition to the obligatory photo, what information should I gather?

thanrose
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If you recall what brand of bird seed blend you used, you could try the distributor or whoever is listed on the bag. Many times the sunflower seeds are the tiny little black ones that are actually high in oil, but of course the larger striped ones are sometimes in there too. What this sunflower won't be is a mammoth 10 foot tall with ten inch width of the seed head. You would have to buy those specific seeds.

No one is going to be able to identify the sunflower species and cultivar from just the leaves, and quite possibly not from seeing the flowering and growth habit.

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applestar
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I think thanrose is right and it would be impossible to tell with any certainty.... but I'm curious -- WHY do you want to know? What is the purpose for finding out?

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Albert_136
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applestar wrote:.... but I'm curious -- WHY do you want to know? What is the purpose for finding out?
Several overlapping reasons.
  • I am old, infirm, tethered to supplemental oxygen -and- this is much more interesting than politics.
  • Rural youth, microbiology major, explored agriculture in graduate school but got sucked into IT and still find plants more interesting.
  • This particular sunflower is not going into any Guinness books but it is, so far, interesting.

thanrose
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Ah, totally get that. Still same answer.

I don't know of any forum where the botany is so oriented to identify seedlings, but suspect that your local aggie university will have some presence in the agricultural extension office. Me? I'd have to go to Gainesville or look around for info from the gators there, and we're not so big on sunflowers here.

On more esoteric questions, I have had some luck on identifying flora and fauna with University of Florida over the phone. You do have to hop around a bit with narrowing it down to which department and which grad students most likely to answer. It helps if you have a compelling reason. Unis may have plant clinics a few times a year.

I'd be thinking that Kansas universities would have a bit more enthusiasm for this as the plant grows. State flower and huge agribusiness.

With botanical questions, what uni people would want to see is multiple photos in good lighting, close up of features such as stem nature, leaf axils and petioles, undersides, any areas of color difference, and comments on texture and smell. Unfortunately I'd think all sunflowers will look about the same until they are getting mature enough to bloom.

Right now I have a couple of marigold seedlings that I got from pocketed seed heads in various places. Pretty sure that one is a tall and red head because of the vigor and tint of the stem, and the other two are more of the French type and probably yellow or yellow orange. You can sort of do that with lots of annual flowers, with some degree of success. So I do see your interest in this.

The one open forum for a uni's botany department that I know is really unlikely to even respond to such a question. Maybe after a week, someone would rip off a response such as, "too soon to tell." Academics often think on a different time frame than the hoi polloi. So three years from now, someone would respond and ask if you ever got an answer.

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Albert_136
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Well, turns out it was 'nothing to write home about'. It finally developed into a branching sunflower plant not much higher than the eve of the house. The other seed from the wild bird food were singular flowers about five feet tall, so, I am guessing this seed could have been put there by a blue jay that buries stuff in the area. This one just opened it's first flower yesterday, 14 days after the others bloomed.

thanrose
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Still interesting. I'd imagine the birdseed distributor relies on a seed broker of some sort and the specific varieties are not really exclusive. I know I've gotten bulk seed with a few randoms mixed in, or dried beans from the grocery which were not 100% as described. In fact, I often grow or at least sprout the odd little seeds.

The sunflower that branched would have been more of what I'd expect from a bird seed supplier. While the showy large heads are desirable for some people, they are not necessary or even preferable sources for songbirds.

Love blue jays. Lots of people hate them. They are a little bossy and will chase other birds. I have been struck on the head by a nesting jay, so was already familiar with the aggressive nature when I rehabbed a destroyed wing blue jay. Had him for a little over a year in a huge bird condo with branches and sod and mealworms and places to hide. He, like all other blue jays, would have to steal his food if he saw me anywhere nearby. He'd hop to a perch nearish the food, hop away, glance in my direction, hop further away, back to it again, away, back, glance, away... Eventually he'd pick up a seed or mealworm or kibble and hop as high as he could to the top of the cage, about 6 feet in all, probably at least five perches. Sometimes he'd drop his morsel and have to start over. He also loved to steal bright shiny things.

But I digress.

ETA: His name was KaChu Toi, or Cat Chew Toy.

ColinOz
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An example of seed for this is the variety Sunbird 7. (grey striped seed)
Search "commercial sunflower variety"
For your amusement..
The commercial varieties are all hybrids, so growing from seed will have variation.
The parent would have had a single flower at the top.
The few times I did this, the offspring had multiple smaller flowers

imafan26
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I was told to avoid sunflower bird seed mixes. One of my colleagues had parrots and I used to give him the sunflower seed heads for the birds. He had his daughters remove the seeds from the head instead of the birds. He said he needed to give his daughters something to do more than the birds. He also told me that birds should not get too many sunflower seeds because it makes them more aggressive. I noticed that too. Cardinal mixes have a lot of sunflower seeds and they are territorial and aggressive to all birds that are not part of their family.



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