Sunflowers & Relatives

Ed Schilling, UTK Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, will present a general overview of the sunflower family, Asteraceae, that discusses the arrangement and evolution of its flowering structures, and reviews uses of members of the family in gardens. A more detailed look will be provided for the “true” sunflowers, the genus Helianthus and its relatives, which include the common sunflower (that we use for cooking oil and for bird seed), the Jerusalem artichoke, and almost 50 other species in North America. This meeting of the Tennessee Valley Wild Ones is free and open to the public.