What is the history of sunflowers?

Answer 1

Sunflowers are native to both North and South America, where indigenous people cultivated them for over 4,000 years. Year after year, they chose the largest seeds from the biggest heads, developing huge flowers with large seeds. Sunflower seeds were part of the regular diet of the Native Americans long before corn, squash, and beans, known as the three sisters, were cultivated in North America. When European explorers introduced sunflower seeds to Europe in the 16th century, they received little notice as a food, but they were planted as ornamental flowers. Peter the Great (1672-1725) saw sunflowers blooming in Holland, and brought seeds back to Russia, where they were enthusiastically eaten. The Russian Orthodox Church forbade the eating of meat and oily plants during Lent. Because sunflower seeds were new food to Russians, there was no mention of them in Church doctrine as a prohibited food, so the Russians enjoyed them throughout Lent. By the 18th century, sunflowers were being grown and cultivated throughout Russia. European farmers who came to North America in the 19th century preferred to plant cereal grains instead of the more labor-intensive sunflower seeds. But in the 1870s, Mennonite farmers from Russia settled in Canada, where they reintroduced sunflower seeds from Russia to North America. In the following decade, the Mennonites sold the seeds for their huge Russian sunflowers to U.S. seed companies. In the 1930s, the Spanish Civil War of the 1930′s created a shortage of olive oil imported to Argentina, so the farmers there began producing sunflower oil. Sunflower oil became popular in cold climates because it stayed liquid at low temperatures. In 1966, a Russian sunflower that produced twice the amount of oil as other varieties began being planted in the U.S., where it became a major crop during the 1970s.