Sunflowers are native to our continent, long cultivated by Native Americans as a staple as basic as corn, squash and beans. While we think of sunflowers as merely decorative, or a source of snacks, for centuries the seeds were pounded into meal to use in soups, drinks and cakes, or boiled to separate the oil for cooking and cosmetics. Snakebites and rheumatism were soothed with sunflower roots, and coughs and fevers treated with a tea brewed from sunflower stems. The dark-hulled species produced a purple dye used both for body painting and for coloring textiles and baskets.

Columbus brought sunflower seeds back from his voyage to the New World, and they quickly became popular throughout Europe. Peter the Great of Russia saw sunflowers for the first time on a visit to The Netherlands in 1697 and carried them back to Russia, where the thick, black soil grew huge and healthy plants.

Botanically, sunflowers are daisies and members of the aster family. Their genus is Helianthus, which includes 50 wild and cultivated species of annual and perennial sunflowers. While the sunflower head looks like a single flower, it is really a bunch of little florets packed in a circle, each with its own ovary, stigma, style and anthers. A large sunflower head is made up of thousands of these florets, each producing a single seed, with the outer ring of florets sporting the characteristic ray petals.

Now In Bloom Dahlia 'David Howard' won a Royal Horticultural Society Award of Garden Merit for its flashy good looks. It blooms from July until frost, with large apricot-orange flowers set off by dark purple foliage. Like all dahlias, 'David Howard' needs full sun, rich soil and even moisture. Because of its color combination, it looks especially good grown in a terra-cotta pot.

Sunflowers have many garden virtues. They grow easily from seed and graciously, but not aggressively, seed themselves about. They grow quickly, bloom for weeks and dry easily if the flower heads are cut just before they peak, then hung upside down. Give them full sun and plenty of space, and you'll have towering patches of sunflowers to cut for the house, attract butterflies and feed birds in the autumn.

The 'Mammoth Russian' sunflower (H. Annuus) is the quintessential golden yellow sunflower of childhood drawings. Tough and drought resistant, it grows 9 to 10 feet high. Its flower head is a foot across, and is quite a sight covered with the monarch butterflies that flock to it. 'Inca Jewels' bloom in shades from gold through bronze; 'Kong' is the tallest, growing 12 to 14 feet high. My current favorite is 'Sunrich Lemon,' which blooms early and long with the dramatic color scheme of soft yellow petals set off by black center disks. If you're short on space, dwarf varieties like 'Music Box' and 'Sundance Kid' are perfect for containers, growing only a few feet high.

Facts and fancies

Stories surround any plant so long loved, and sunflowers are no exception. Here are a few:

• When the Mormons left Missouri in the 1830s in search of religious freedom, it is said that the first wagon train scattered a trail of sunflower seeds behind it. When another wagon train set out the next summer, it followed a path of sunflowers all the way to Utah.

• Van Gogh spent the last three years of his life painting sunflowers. When 15 of the paintings were exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1987, they set off a craze for sunflower bouquets.

• Sunflowers are being used to clean up contaminated ponds near Chernobyl in the former Soviet Union. Planted on floating gardens, their roots dangle into the water to soak up radioactive waste.

For history, growing tips and recipes, see "The Great Sunflower Book" by Barbara Flores (Ten Speed Press, 1997).