Wild Sunflowers

Sarah Loft

#2977 of 3377

Sarah Loft

New York, NY

$143.00

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2382 x 3430 px

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Title

Wild Sunflowers

Artist

Sarah Loft

Medium

Mixed Media - Mixed Media, Collage And Digital Processing

Description

This is a digital reworking of a paper collage (old magazines) I made several years ago. The sky seems to be swirling around these vibrant sunflowers. They are the sun and the moon of their own small space.

Per Wikipedia: The sunflower (Helianthus annuus) is an annual plant in the family Asteraceae, with a large flower head (capitulum). The stem of the flower can grow up to 3 metres tall, with a flower head that can be 30 cm wide. Other types of sunflowers include the California Royal Sunflower, which has a burgundy (red + purple) flower head.

The flower head is actually an inflorescence made of hundreds or thousands of tiny flowers called florets. The central florets look like the centre of a normal flower, and the outer florets look like yellow petals. All together they make up a "false flower" or pseudanthium. The benefit to the plant is that it is very easily seen by the insects and birds which pollinate it, and it produces thousands of seeds.

The sunflower is the state flower of Kansas. That is why Kansas is sometimes called the Sunflower State. To grow well, sunflowers need full sun. They grow best in fertile, wet, well-drained soil with a lot of mulch. In commercial planting, seeds are planted 45 cm (1.5 ft) apart and 2.5 cm (1 in) deep.

The outer petal-bearing florets are the sterile florets and can be yellow, red, orange, or other colours. The florets inside the circular head are called disc florets, which mature into seeds.

The flower petals within the sunflower's cluster are always in a spiral pattern. Generally, each floret is oriented toward the next by approximately the golden angle, 137.5 degrees, producing a pattern of interconnecting spirals, where the number of left spirals and the number of right spirals are successive Fibonacci numbers. Typically, there are 34 spirals in one direction and 55 in the other; on a very large sunflower there could be 89 in one direction and 144 in the other.

Sunflowers commonly grow to heights between 1.5 and 3.5 m (5 to12 ft.). The tallest sunflower confirmed by Guinness World Records is 9.17 m (2014, Germany). In 16th century Europe the record was already 7.3 m (24 ft., Spain). Most cultivars are variants of H. annuus, but four other species (all perennials) are also domesticated. This includes H. tuberosus, the Jerusalem Artichoke, which produces edible tubers.

Note: The watermark will not appear on the print you purchase.

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