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A fascinating portrait of the sunflower Sunday Aug 28, 2016 at 12:01 AM By Rhonda Nowakfor the Mail Tribune “The earth paints a portrait of the sun at dawn with sunflowers in bloom. Unhappy with the portrait, she erases it and paints it again and again.”  — Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel Prize-winning poet, 1861-1941   Gardeners either really like to grow sunflowers or they don’t. My neighbors, for example, plant a small forest of sunflowers every year in their front yard. Blue jays living in the laurel hedge that separates our properties adore eating the sunflower seeds in autumn, and they joyously disperse the makings of new sunflowers into our garden next door. Last summer, I allowed the volunteers to grow into a small forest of our own. I enjoyed watching them shoot up like gangly teenagers until they towered over the other garden flowers. Walking along our front path beside the soaring sunflowers, with morning sunshine slanting through the grove of thick stalks and huge, heart-shaped leaves, I felt the same muted surrealism I experienced years ago while scuba diving through a gigantic kelp bed off the coast of Southern California. However, my lightheartedness turned into melancholy when the flower heads grew heavy and began to droop. When the sunflowers began to die, I grew so unaccountably despondent that I ripped out all of the sunflowers in the garden, unable to wait until the seeds ripened for the blue jays nearby. This year, I decided to save myself from the emotional overload, so I pulled out all of the sunflower volunteers as soon as I spotted them. I’ve learned that I’m not alone in responding to sunflowers in such a visceral way. Because of their erect stature, large leaves, and round flower head, sunflowers are often humanized in literature, paintings and other art forms (see my blog for examples). Little wonder that the sunflower’s life trajectory — growing, reaching, blooming, procreating, wilting, dying — is often imagined as humankind’s mortal journey. On the other hand, sunflowers have been celebrated as symbols of hope and happiness for centuries. Such sentiments were exemplified by Helen Keller, who wrote in “Optimism” (1903), “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadow. It’s what sunflowers do.” In fact, modern science has proven that a young sunflower does, indeed, keep its “face to the sunshine.” Sunflowers have evolved a circadian rhythm linked to stem growth. As the sun rises, light-sensitive cells in the eastern side of the stem respond to sunlight by lengthening. This process orients the flower toward the sun as the stem cells sense the light source moving westward throughout the day. Sunflowers have other, equally amazing, characteristics. Wild sunflowers have evolved a toxin they emit through their roots to staunch the growth of nearby weeds and other plants that are competing for moisture and nutrients in the soil. In fact, sunflower roots can reach 8 feet deep in search of rivals for sustenance. However, nature has provided a perfect counterbalance to the sunflower’s allelopathic qualities. The plant also has the ability to absorb toxins, store them in its stems and leaves, and then use the toxins as a defense mechanism against insects and diseases. Thus, sunflowers were utilized to decontaminate toxic wastewater after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred in 1986 in the Ukraine. Since then, sunflowers have become a symbol of international efforts aimed at nuclear weapons disarmament. Given all of the interesting facts about sunflowers, I’m glad I missed one of the volunteers while I was pulling them out of the garden earlier this summer. It’s 4 feet tall now and, just this morning, its face to the eastern sun, it began unfurling its bright yellow ray flowers, as English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822) wrote: “Light-enchanted sunflower! Thou who gazest ever true and tender on the sun’s revolving splendor …” Rhonda Nowak is a member of the Jackson County Master Gardener Association and teaches writing at Rogue Community College. Email her at [email protected].