All summer long I watched the sunflowers grow in strength. From fragile seedlings they surged into stout-stemmed plants before erupting in huge sunbursts above my head. Now their plump cushions are packed with developing seed and their outer “petals” – the ray florets – are drying out and twisting.
As with other daisies, these flowerheads are made up of ray florets and disc florets. The brightly coloured outer band are a signal to pollinators, drawing them into a core of hundreds of tiny individual flowers. These are arranged with economical perfection, spiralling out in complex mathematical patterns, soft to the touch as I run my hand over them.
I’m standing in the vegetable garden on a golden afternoon in October. The sunflowers have held up to high winds and created a hedge that protects the vegetables. They come from a single packet of seed, given by neighbours who drove from Allendale to the Ukrainian border with medical supplies in early spring.
The sun warms my back as I stand in a blizzard of gnats. There’s a background chuckle of pheasants, the harsh calls of rooks and jackdaws, and the oaks and hazels are colouring the wooded bank outside the garden. Backlighting flares through spoked umbels of dill, marigolds glow orange, and the green hollow tubes of spring onions are luminous. There’s the soft scent of late sweet peas. Standing tall above all of them are the sunflowers.
Their flowerheads are angled east and south, their bristly, hairy leaves untouched by caterpillars. I place my hand on a wide, heart-shaped leaf to feel the warmth that attracts so many insects. There are flies of every size along with plant bugs, mayflies, a sedgesitter hoverfly, root-maggot flies and a marmalade hoverfly. I watch a drone fly – a honeybee mimic – grooming itself, rubbing legs over large compound eyes, then over its upper body. A single red admiral is drawing in nectar, and common carder bees and buff-tailed bumblebees feed with a slow end-of-season gait.
As the sunflowers ripen, there will be a feast for finches and I’ll collect some seed for next year, leaving the rest to stand over winter. With their strength and solidity, these plants shelter and feed many different forms of life.
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