Thank you for buying a native plant from Windflower Native Plant Nursery. Your purchase helps create a bit of Montana natural  history in your own yard as well as restore a piece of native Montana. This plant was grown by seed I collected locally in an ethical manner.    

Common (Kansas) Sunflower
Helianthus annuus
Aster or Composite Family

Plant color: yellow ray flowers with reddish-brown center
Plant height: 2 to 7 feet
Bloom time: mid to late summer into the fall
Native habitat: dry open sites, often along roadsides or in fields, plains, hills and disturbed areas

Native to North America and Montana, this is our tallest annual plant. Once one of the few plants cultivated by plains tribes it is now cultivated world-wide for its oily seeds.

Much of the Native American use of this plant was lost as agriculture declined but what is known is the seeds were dried over a fire, ground into  flour, mixed with grease and pressed into a high-energy, light-weight bar.

The leaves and stems have stiff hairs that make this plant rough to the touch.

This is an annual plant but it seeds so prolifically that if the conditions are right and you leave the seedhead on the plant, you will have more sunflowers greeting you next spring.

 

Windflower Native Plant Nursery
PO Box 306
West Glacier, MT 59936
1.406.387.5527
www.windflowernativeplants.com