Ingredients · Flower

Sunflower

Helianthus annuus · Asteraceae (daisy family)

Sunflower
Bright yellow ray florets, dried — twelve products carry them, and almost always for the look. Sunflower petals are large, sturdy and hold their colour, so a pinch gives a dark tea the sort of yellow flash a grey-brown leaf cannot produce on its own. They bring a faint honeyed note and very little else. Where a label says sunflower blossoms or sunflower petals, this is what it means: the flower, not the seed.

What it’s like, and how to use it

The partFlower
KindFlower
CaffeineCaffeine-free
Where it is fromNorth America (native range)
TasteFaintly honeyed and grassy; a colour ingredient rather than a flavour one

How to use it

Scattered into a blend for yellow. Steeped with anything. The petals are edible and mild enough to use on salads and cakes as a garnish.

With food

A visual ingredient. Honey, if anything.

With spices

Calendula, safflower and marigold — the yellow-and-orange family. Cornflower for the contrast.

With tea

Black tea blends, where the yellow shows against dark leaf. Rooibos. Chocolate and mint blends.

Its story

Where it comes from

One of the few major crops domesticated in North America. Evidence suggests domestication in Mexico around 2600 BCE, with the earliest known fully domesticated sunflower in the United States found in Tennessee around 2300 BCE. Spanish explorers carried seeds back to Europe in 1510. No lot origin is named in our notes.

What happened

The sunflower went to Europe as a curiosity and came back an industry, and the turn happened in Russia. In the eighteenth century sunflower oil became very popular there, particularly among members of the Russian Orthodox Church, because only plant-based fats were permitted during Lent — a religious rule created a market, and Russian breeders spent the next two centuries making the plant that fed it. The other well-known thing about sunflowers is half true: young sunflowers do track the sun, the head facing east at dawn and moving west through the day, but once they reach full maturity they stop and face east for good.

On the shelf with it

Every product it goes into.

Every ingredient in the shop

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