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| Sunflower |
Leo
Happiness, Far Sight
Native to North America, Sunflowers need
full sun and enjoy hot summers for flowering. The plants can grow up to 12 feet tall but the tallest require support. The flowers attract bees, birds and butterflies, as well as deer and squirrels
who feed on the seeds.
Sunflowers are commonly yellow with a brown center but are also grown in orange, red, brown and bi-color.
Sunflower seeds are harvested for food;
the seeds can be eaten or pressed into sunflower oil. The first use of sunflowers for cooking and
for healing was by the Native Americans about 3000 BC in the American Southwest.
Today it is a commercial crop grown all over the world. Sunflowers will grow in
soil ranging from sand to clay; good soil drainage is required.
Sunflowers follow the sun. The blooms track the progress of the sun
across the sky. Those drawn to
sunflowers also track the light, or we can say they attract the light. The essence and energy of the sunflower can
be seen in people with optimistic personalities– those who can pay more
attention to the positive things in their experience.
The
very long stems reach for the sky, showing us that we too can grow above those
around us to see the knowledge and wisdom that may otherwise be lost in the
complex detail of life. We can stretch
our heads above our everyday experiences to see into spiritual depths with ease.
Sunflowers are often planted in rows so
that they protect each other from the rain and wind. You can see the benefit of
being surrounded by people who live with the knowledge and wisdom that we are
more than our physical selves, and who value the spiritual along with the
physical experience.
Sunflowers have been used throughout
history as food, for oil, for ceremony, for commercial and artistic
purposes. They represent longevity in
our lives – look at the variety of uses as symbolism of all that sunflower
brings to us to support us in longevity.
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