Our Mongolian sunflower – not so giant a sunflower, but definitely a tall plant!

We didn’t have the sunflower for Christmas, but we will for the New Year. Our Mongolian giant sunflower has finally bloomed!

The entire Mongolian giant sunflower plant – all 9 or so feet of it!

It has peaked at around 9 feet, or just over 2.7 metres high. The flower is smaller than I wish it would be, but it is still pretty and bright.

The centre of the flower is light green, and the tiny florets are already blooming, and I was glad to see, attracting bees, even at that height.

These young caterpillars decimated about a quarter of the leaf before we found and removed them.

As with our last giant sunflower plant, the pests have tried to thwart the plant. A small horde of hairy caterpillars hatched and began feeding on one of the leaves. Had I caught them early, they would have been on just that one leaf; because I didn’t, I had to check the surrounding leaves because some of them had already begun wandering. I hope I caught them all, because I want the plant to have enough leaves to sustain the flower for as long as possible, and to possibly harvest seeds from the plant.

I hope this flower brightens the day of those of you reading from colder climates.

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