Sunflowers are so beautiful. They're husky. They come in small “teddy bear” size with no seed centers, and huge size, from the seeds of the Russian Mammoth and Mongolian Mammoth varieties, with giant seeded centers.
Sunflowers come in yellows, oranges, reds to rust reds and all color combinations and mixes, provided by breeders. It is hard not to smile and say “ahh” as you look at the flowers. Seeing them does you a lot of good whether they're in a bouquet on your table or in a huge field.
Happy, strong and beautiful: what more could anyone want in a flower? Romantic history between the Greek Sun God Apollo and the water nymph Clytie was one-sided. Clytie had told Apollo how she loved and adored him and he rebuffed her. Apollo had a new love interest and it was not Clytie.
All Clytie could do was to try and watch Apollo go across the sky every day and hope to see his face. Clytie eventually stopped eating, wasted away and died. When Apollo saw what happened he felt terrible.
With Apollo’s constant begging to “bring her back,” Zeus and his crew of good deed doers brought Clytie back, as a sunflower, so she could continually watch Apollo travel across the sky every day. In Greek, sunflower is "helianthus". "Helio" means sun and "anthus" means flower.
Helianthus flowers follow the sun all day. Mature flowers may face mainly east, but will turn somewhat during the day. When I lived in Minnesota, right at the northern border, I was introduced to a huge field of oil-p.