Sunflower, the state flower of Kansas

How to recognize it

The common wild sunflower is a coarse, upright annual, usually 2 to 10 feet tall and sometimes taller, with rough, hairy stems. Its leaves are long-stalked and triangular to heart-shaped, often four inches to more than a foot long. The flower heads are three to six inches across, with 17 or more bright yellow rays around a reddish-brown to purplish center. Wild plants are usually branched and carry many smaller heads, unlike the single giant head of a crop sunflower.

In Kansas it blooms from July through September, and the seeds ripen in the flat central disk.

Where it grows

The common sunflower is native to North America and grows throughout Kansas, on open and disturbed ground, along roadsides, at the edges of fields and in low, moist areas. It is so common that the USDA plant guide calls it a widespread roadside weed. Its seeds feed many birds, including meadowlarks, as well as small mammals.

Where to see it

From midsummer to early fall, look along almost any Kansas road. Wild sunflowers line highways, field edges and vacant lots across the state, and in late summer whole roadsides can turn yellow.

A crop with deep roots

Native Americans grew the sunflower more than a thousand years ago, for its seeds and oil, and modern crop sunflowers descend from this wild species. It hybridizes easily with other sunflowers.

A law with a preamble

Kansas adopted the sunflower in 1903. The law, now K.S.A. 73-1801, is unusual because it begins with a preamble explaining the choice. It praises the sunflower as easy to draw, carve or embroider and as a reminder of frontier days, and it says the sunflower had already given Kansas its name around the world. The act names it both the state flower and the state’s floral emblem.

The sunflower appears elsewhere in Kansas symbols too: it crowns the state seal on the flag, and it fills the old 1925 state banner, which is still described in the law.