Question

Sunflower is very beautiful flower justify

Answer 1

g05 8/22 pp. 10-11

The Sunflower​—Beautiful and Useful

By Awake! writer in Switzerland

BRIGHT, sunny days tend to cheer us up. No wonder, then, that people around the world also feel cheered by the flower named for the sun​—the sunflower! The happy, smiling face of a single sunflower in a garden can lift one’s spirits. How much more a big field full of their bright-yellow faces!

But do you know how that friendly flower came to be so popular? Does it really turn toward the sun? And is it truly useful?

A Journey Around the World

The sunflower’s original home extended from Central America to what is now southern Canada. There, Indians cultivated sunflowers. After Spanish explorers took the plant across the Atlantic in 1510 C.E., it quickly spread throughout western Europe. At first, the sunflower was considered just an ornament for adorning botanical and private gardens. But by about the middle of the 18th century, its seeds came to be viewed as a delicacy. People back then also used its leaves and blossoms to make a tea for combating fever.

In 1716 an Englishman obtained a license to extract oil from sunflowers for use in the weaving and tanning industries. Yet, sunflower oil remained almost unknown in the rest of Europe until the 1800’s. True, the Russian Czar Peter the Great took sunflower seeds to Russia from the Netherlands in 1698. However, commercial production of sunflowers in Russia did not begin until the 1830’s. A few years later, Russia’s Voronezh region was producing thousands of tons of sunflower oil. Cultivation of sunflowers soon spread into neighboring Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, and the former Yugoslavia.

Ironically, at the end of the 19th century, the sunflower was reintroduced to North America by Russian immigrants. Early settlers to the continent had not continued cultivating sunflowers as the Indians had. Today huge sunflower fields dot the landscape in countries all around the globe.