THE SAUGUS ADVOCATE – FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2021 Page 13 SAUGUS GARDENS IN THE SUMMER Here’s what’s blooming in town this week to make your walks more enjoyable By Laura Eisener O ne of the largest plant families is the Compositae family (Asteraceae). Any “flower” that looks like a daisy is in this family, including coneflowers (Echinacea spp.), black-eyed Susans (Rudbeckia spp.), Montauk daisies (Nipponanthemum nipponicum), oxeye daisies (Leucanthemum vulgare), zinnias (Zinnia spp.) and many others. What most people see as a flower is a head made up of many small flowers, often known as florets. The word floret refers to a flower that is one of a tight cluster, such as members of the Compositae family and the cabbage family (Brassicaceae, also known as Cruciferae), such as cauliflower and broccoli. Disk florets make up the “center” and contain the reproductive parts, so those are the florets that can become seeds. How many are there in the center of a sunflower? Go ahead and try to count them if you like, but some of the larger ones may have over a thousand individual florets. The ray florets are not capable of forming seeds, but they do have a showy, fused together petal, so their role in attracting pollinators is important. One genus, sunflower (Helianthus), has become very popular around the world as a food product and as an ornamental flower. Some sunflower species are perennial in our climate, such as the Jerusalem artichoke or sunchoke (Helianthus tuberosus), which has an edible underground tuber and is a very vigorous North American native. The most familiar species, common sunflower (Helianthus annuus), is an annual known for its large size flower head and golden petals in late summer and fall. These can reach 10' tall in some varieties. It is amazing A SUNFLOWER CLOSE-UP: From Joanie Allbee’s garden. (Courtesy photo to The Saugus Advocate by Joanie Allbee) DAYS OF THE SUNFLOWERS: One of the cheerful faces of the popular flower that thrives in Saugus gardens in late summer. See inside for more photos and interesting facts about the sunflower in this week’s “Saugus gardens in the summer.” (Courtesy photo to The Saugus Advocate by Joanie Allbee) A LATE SUMMER GIFT: The colorful annual zinnia (Zinnia elegans), showing several layers of pink petalled ray florets and yellow disk florets. (Courtesy photo to The Saugus Advocate by Laura Eisener) to see such a huge result from a seed planted just this spring. The tallest ones usually produce a single flower head per stem, but other varieties may have branching stems with multiple heads per plant. While yellow is the usual color of the petals, varieties which have red, orange or nearly white are also available. The color of the disk florets can vary on a single sunflower variety, depending on what stage they are in, and they may change color once pollinated, and then as they develop seeds they will usually be varied tones of brown. Often the disk florets are brownish, but at least one popular ornamental variety, ‘Sunbeam,’ has disk florets that are green. Seeds produce an important and nutritious oil, and the seeds themselves are consumed by people and animals. Most common sunflower vaSUNFLOWER-THEMED MANTEL: Bouquet, painting and wall quilt in my living room. (Courtesy photo to The Saugus Advocate by Laura Eisener) rieties, those considered “single” sunflowers, have a single row of ray florets around the outer edge. Sunflower varieties considered “Double” have multiple rows of ray florets – sometimes this means that there are no disk florets visible at all, and sometimes there is a very small center with disk florets. Vincent Van Gogh painted “Still Life: Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers” in 1888 in his famous “yellow house” in Arles. There are at least two varieties of sunflowers in the two-tone yellow vase of his most famous painting – some are single and some are double. He actually painted about a dozen versions of this subject, and sunflowers have been a popular theme for many other artists also. While most sunflower varieties are ‘single,’ there are popular varieties, such as ‘Teddy Bear,’ which have so many ray florets it is hard to see any disk space at all! At an average of 3' tall, ‘Teddy Bear’ is often described as a dwarf sunflower as it is not grown for its dramatic height. ‘Sunfinity,’ which blooms continuously for most of the summer and early fall, is an especially popular potted variety, bearing many flower heads at once on branching, stout stems. Their bloom time is far longer than that of other sunflower varieties, but they rarely form seeds. The rainy weather of July was somewhat challenging for the sun-loving common sunflowers, but their cheerful faces have still popped up in several Saugus gardens. Joanie Allbee grows hers from seed and says, “I love NEWCOMERS: Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea) and blanket flower (Gaillardia grandiflora), two perennial Compositae family members newly planted at the Saugus Historical Society/Saugus Cable TV headquarters at 30 Main St. (Courtesy photo to The Saugus Advocate by Laura Eisener) A WELCOMED GUEST: Here is a picture of a hummingbird in Joanie Allbee’s sunflower garden. (Courtesy photo to The Saugus Advocate by Joanie Allbee) them. They make me smile, and it’s fun to see the hummingbirds plugged right into them – they stop at the window in mid-flight hovering as if to say ‘Thank you!’ I in turn smile and say ‘Thank you’ to them!” Editor’s Note: Laura Eisener is a landscape design consultant who helps homeowners with landscape design and plant selection and placement of trees and shrubs, as well as perennials. She is a member of the Saugus Garden Club and offered to write a series of articles about “what’s blooming in town” shortly after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. She was inspired after seeing so many people taking up walking
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