Sunflowers tower when others wane

August leaves the garden looking for the most part tired and ragged. Spent nicotiana and nasturtium lie on top of the compost pile and the lower leaves of tomato and bean plants are paper thin, yellow. Raspberry plants that were the focus of our attention two weeks ago are now just a tangle of sprawling brambles.

As I leave the back porch steps for my morning walk through the garden, the sun rising behind me, I am greeted by the painted faces of a tribe of sunflowers peering through and over those brambles. It is one of the few remaining spots in the garden where vigor and vitality reign.

They are Autumn Beauty sunflowers, grown from seed obtained from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds (seeds@rareseeds.com). They live up to their name, with flower heads 6 inches wide, dark brown clusters of fertile disc flowers surrounded by ray petals in shades of red, gold, rust, and burgundy. Seven feet tall now, they tower over the surrounding garden, nodding as they greet the morning sun and anyone who enters the garden with it. (The nodding or drooping of sunflower heads as they mature has the practical value of reducing bird damage and disease that might develop if water accumulated in the seed head.)

My sunflowers are a far cry from their North American ancestors, small multi-branched plants with small flower heads and small seeds that can still be seen growing along roadsides in the western United States. Domestication of Helianthus annuus began around 1000 B.C. as American Indians began using its seeds for food, the flower petals for dyes, and the stalks for winter fuel. Cultivation of the species by the Plains Indians eventually resulted in seeds 1,000 percent larger than wild sunflowers.

By the early 1500s, Spaniards had introduced the plant to Europe, where it was grown mostly as a garden ornamental. Sunflowers were not developed as an agricultural crop until their introduction to Russia in the late 1600s. By 1940, Americans were able to import domesticated varieties of their native plant with oil content much higher than home-grown varieties. Today well over two million acres of sunflowers are grown in the United States.

Hybrid sunflowers now dominate both agricultural and ornamental varieties. However, a few seed companies, including the aforementioned Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, are striving to preserve open-pollinated varieties that represent the heritage of this North American species.

I planted the sunflowers for the goldfinches, planning to eat only a few seeds myself, perhaps save a few for next year’s garden. The birds know they are there. A flock of five finches were pecking at one head this week, even though the seeds are not fully formed. They were after the developing kernels, perhaps working on the theory that there would be less work involved without the hard seed coat in the way. They gave it up about halfway through the head, returned to dine at the porch feeder for the time being. I extracted a couple of kernels from the same head – they tasted like green peanuts just pulled from the ground – but it took some effort. I assume the goldfinches will return once the seeds have fully ripened.

Send queries to Gardening Questions, P.O. Box 418, Ellsworth 04605, or to rmanley@ptc-me.net. Include name, address and telephone number.