One may assume from seeing Van Gogh’s famous paintings of
sunflowers that this happy flower is a native of the fields of Europe. This is
not quite the case. Of the plants native to North America, the sunflower is
probably one of the cheeriest. It was cultivated by Native Americans but found
itself abandoned once our ancestors took over the landscape. Thanks to a few Europeans
that took seeds back to Europe, it flourished in a new home, spreading across
Europe to Ukraine and Russia. As we know from looking at food packaging today,
cooking oil can be produced from the seeds of the sunflower. When the sunflower
made its way to the Orthodox Christians of Ukraine and Russia, it found itself
cultivated on a massive scale, as it was one of the few foods not banned during
Lent, foods such as butter. More productive varieties were produced during the
Soviet Era. Once it was discovered to be a more healthy oil compared to corn
and soy oils, it became popular in America. Thus the sunflower found it had
come full circle in its travels.
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