For such a cheery-looking, smile-invoking plant, the sunflower is a rather complex, even confusing slice of nature. For starters, it’s not really a flower but instead many thousands of flowers in one — the center holds the bulk of these florets, but each yellow petal is its own flower as well.
Things only grow more complicated as you step back and look at the entire sunflower family, which is known by multiple names. Historically, Compositae referred to the composite nature of the flowers, but today Asteraceae is the scientifically preferred name. Yet amateurs frequently refer to the family as the DYCs, for Darned Yellow Composites. That’s because there are so many, their composite structure can be tough to identify, and so many species look alike.
Coming to our rescue is Richard Spellenberg and Naida Zucker, the New Mexico–based, husband-and-wife authors of The Sunflower Family: A Guide to Family Asteraceae in the Contiguous United States. I’ve known the authors for a few years because they are cousins of my wife, but only last year while visiting them in Las Cruces did I fully grasp how respected these retired New Mexico State biologists are on the world’s botanical stage.