Sunflowers

Helianthus Annuuss is a North American plant whose wild form looks like an aster or large daisy. Cultivated Sunflowers today have been domesticated to the point where their flowers are the size of a dinner plate.

Mammoth sunflowers, originally bred in Russian, are 12 to 17 feet high, the head diameter is close to one foot which is more than ten times the size of a wild sunflower's disc, and there is normally only one head per plant, instead of the many, much smaller, flowers of the wild plant. The Russians started breeding this American flower for religious reasons. During Lent and Advent, the use of oil in cooking was banned by the Orthodox Church. But sunflower seed oil was deemed to be exempt from this prohibition. This provided one of the economic pressures that drove the recent selective breeding of the sunflower.