SOME

SUNNY
SUNFLOWER
FACTS
Early printed books can help us
chart the domesticated
sunflower’s migration from
North America to Europe, as well
as identify the practical reasons
why it was cultivated and even
cherished, some of which still
stand today. Such books
contained the earliest known
visual representations of
cultivated sunflowers that were
produced by Europeans in the
late 1560s. Illustrations, like one
from Rembert Dodoens’s 1569
Florum et Coronarium, show tall
plants with sun-shaped blooms,
establishing a foundation for
subsequent portrayals of the
flower.
As explained on the Plant
Humanities Lab, “Europeans
associated sunflowers with the
human sentiments of loyalty and
constancy because the plant’s
heliotropic phase (growing
toward the light) of development
recalled how, in an ancient Greek
myth, the sea nymph Clytie
expressed her devotion to the sun
god Helios.” As the story goes,
Clytie tried unsuccessfully to win
Helios’s affection and, after being
spurned by him, trained her eyes
on his chariot with such intensity
that she wasted away.
Consequently, Clytie was
transformed into a heliotrope—a
plant named for its flowers’
movement toward sunlight.

Sunflower aesthetics in Europe

continued to blossom in the The cultivated sunflower’s
century that followed. Florilegia physical traits—its yellow flower
were crucial to this process head, large disk, and arresting
because they celebrated flowers’ height—are also salient. Because
beauty and sometimes also of its visual appeal, the sunflower
fragrance rather than their use has had a powerful presence in
value. A sumptuous print of a many cultural traditions as an
domesticated sunflower shown ornamental plant, as well as an
life-size and published in the artist’s muse. One could even
1613 book Hortus Eystettensis, argue that we are more familiar
for example, became a model for with sunflower imagery than with
representing Helianthus annuus. the actual plant, thanks to well-
In fact, we can even interpret known paintings like Vincent van
Flos Solis maior (“large flower of Gogh’s 1888 Sunflowers.
the sun”) as anticipating modern
visual stereotypes for the plant,
including the sunflower emoji
The European infatuation with
now mobilized on social media
the sunflower, both real and
platforms to show solidarity with
represented, was made even more
Ukraine.
visible in Anthony van Dyck’s
circa 1632 Self-Portrait with a
Sunflower, which shows the
artist gesturing to a mature
flower. The prominent display of
the plant in the work can be read
as an expression of Van Dyck’s
loyalty to his patron, King
Charles I of England, based in
part on early modern sources that
connect the flower to devotion.