We love sunflowers! Best sunflower photos and sunflower facts
Everyone loves sunflowers. Sunflowers symbolize loyalty and adoration in the Western world. In China, they symbolize long life and good fortune. To Native Americans the sunflower represents harvest and bounty. Enjoy a gallery of our best sunflower photos and fun sunflower facts.
We love sunflowers! Who wouldn’t fall in love with such a bright and cheerful flower that mirrors the bright yellow orb of the sun? Exactly. We’ve yet to see a frown on the face of anyone looking at sunflowers — whether in a field, in a painting (thank you, Van Gogh) or in a vase on a kitchen table.
Sunflowers come in numerous varieties, some tall, some relatively short, some with yellow petals, others with red, orange, and purple hues. Standing at the edge of fields of sunflowers stretching endlessly toward the horizon, it is impossible not to feel happy.
But sunflowers are much more than just a fantastic photo opportunity! The sunflower’s genus, Helianthus, has its roots in the Greek language. If you remember your Greek and Latin derivatives class from high school, “helios” is the word for sun and “Anthos” is the word for flower. Voila, sunflowers! In fact, there is an ancient Greek myth of unrequited love that describes Clytie, a nymph, who loved Apollo. Apollo instead fell in love with Leucothoe. When Clytie told Leucothoe’s father in a fit of jealousy that Apollo loved her, the father buried Clytie alive. Apollo learned of this and turned Clytie into a flower, and, in that form, she would spend her days watching him as he moved across the sky in his chariot … much like young sunflowers turn their flower heads to follow the sun.
QUOTE: “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows. It’s what the sunflowers do.” Hellen Keller.
Throughout history, sunflowers have inspired artists – not just Van Gogh, of course — and writers, alike, and the flowers have been used symbolically as gifts and in ceremonies.
Enjoy our collection of some of our best sunflower photos (well, at least our favorites) from a mid-June visit to Yolo County in California (BIG thanks to Turkovich Family Wines for giving us such wonderful access to its sunflower fields). In addition, we’ve assembled a collection of fun sunflower facts to go with the photos. Enjoy learning as you scroll through the photos. You can click on any photo to make it larger. We hope you love sunflowers as much as we do, and that our sunflower photos will bring you joy.
Rows of sunflowers paint the landscape yellow
Sunflowers ready for their closeup
Hot air balloons over the sunflowers
Getting the perfect sunflower photo
Fun fact: People can be a little whacky (not us, well not here). In 2015 in Germany, nearly 750 members of a club dressed up as sunflowers. Not sure if that was a world record for the largest number of people dressed as sunflowers — if that category exists. We stuck to regular clothes and big smiles for our sunflower selfie.
Starbursts and sunflowers
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