Sunflowers
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7correct to beat the crowd
This sunflower quiz has 45 free questions with answers and covers the plant from root to seed head. There is botany (why the 'flower' is really hundreds of tiny florets, why young heads track the sun and old ones face east, why the seeds spiral in Fibonacci numbers, how tall the record-holder grew), history (domestication by Native Americans, the Spanish voyage to Europe, how Russian Lent turned it into an oil crop), food and farming (confectionery versus oil seeds, sunflower butter, why baseball players chew the seeds, which two countries grow half the world's supply), and culture (Kansas, Ukraine, Van Gogh's Sunflowers and the tomato-soup protest, the Vegan Society, the hidden-disabilities lanyard, Taiwan's Sunflower Movement). About half the questions are easy enough for a garden club or a classroom plant unit; the rest will make a keen gardener or a botany student pause. It works as a summer round for a quiz night, a Kansas or Ukraine themed evening, or a solo test. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia, Guinness World Records and other reference pages, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 45 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the scientific name of the common sunflower?
Helianthus annuus
Helianthus annuus is the common sunflower; wild plants branch into many heads, but Native American farmers bred the crop into a single-headed plant.
Q 02Sunflowers belong to which plant family, one of the largest on Earth?
The daisies
The daisies, or Asteraceae, include the dandelion, whose roots people roast and brew as a caffeine-free coffee substitute.
Q 03What is often called a sunflower's 'flower' is really what?
A head made of many tiny flowers
A head made of many tiny flowers: each one in the dark centre can ripen into a seed, which is why a single head yields so many seeds.
Q 04Which artist filled Tate Modern's Turbine Hall in 2010 with over 100 million handmade porcelain sunflower seeds?
Ai Weiwei
Ai Weiwei invited visitors to walk on the seeds, but within days Tate fenced them off after warning that the porcelain dust could harm health.
Q 05In which compass direction do most mature sunflower heads end up facing?
East
East: once a sunflower stops growing, its head stays turned toward sunrise and warms quickly in the morning, which draws more pollinator visits.
Q 06The counts of left-turning and right-turning spirals in a sunflower seed head typically form what kind of pair?
Successive Fibonacci terms
Successive Fibonacci terms reached Europe through Fibonacci's 1202 book Liber Abaci, which used them to count how many rabbit pairs one pair could breed in a year.
Q 07In which 2009 game do sunflowers produce the 'sun' that players collect and spend?
Plants vs. Zombies
Plants vs. Zombies began as a sequel to PopCap's fish-tank game Insaniquarium, until designer George Fan swapped its alien invaders for zombies.
Q 08In the original French Tintin books, which character's surname is Tournesol, meaning sunflower?
Professor Calculus
Professor Calculus, Tournesol in French, sold his shark-submarine design and used the money to buy Marlinspike Hall for Captain Haddock.
Q 09Seeds claimed as the oldest domesticated sunflowers were found at San Andrés, an archaeological site in which country?
Mexico
Mexico: the San Andrés seeds from Tabasco date to about 2600 BCE, though other researchers soon challenged the identification in the same journal.
Q 10Some Native American groups grew sunflowers as an extra 'sister' beside which famous trio of crops?
Corn, beans and squash
Corn, beans and squash were the Three Sisters: cornstalks served as poles for climbing beans, while broad squash leaves shaded the ground and held back weeds.
Q 11Which Europeans first carried sunflower seeds back across the Atlantic, in the early 16th century?
Spanish explorers
Spanish explorers took the seeds home, but Europe grew the plant mainly as a garden curiosity until it reached Russia, where farmers turned it into an oil crop.
Q 12What helped make sunflower oil hugely popular in imperial Russia?
Church rules on fasting during Lent
Church rules on fasting during Lent forbade butter and lard, but sunflower oil was not on the banned list, so Orthodox Russians could cook with it right through the fast.
Q 13Botanically, what kind of fruit is a sunflower 'seed'?
An achene
Q 21After the Chernobyl disaster, sunflowers were floated on a contaminated pond to do what?
Soak up radioactive metals
Soak up radioactive metals: sunflowers on floating rafts dangled their roots in a pond near the plant, pulled caesium-137 and strontium-90 out of the water, and were then disposed of as radioactive waste.
Q 22A Van Gogh Sunflowers sold at Christie's in March 1987 for a then-record price of roughly how much?
About 40 million dollars
About 40 million dollars more than tripled the auction record, held by a Mantegna; the price spiral that followed carried another Van Gogh, Irises, past it within eight months.
Q 23In October 2022, climate activists threw what at Van Gogh's Sunflowers in London?
An achene is a dry fruit holding a single seed, so the striped hull is really the fruit's wall. The specks on a strawberry are achenes too, each one a whole fruit.
Q 14The sunflower is the national flower of which country?
Ukraine
Ukraine treats the sunflower as its national flower; in June 1996 American, Russian and Ukrainian ministers planted sunflowers at the Pervomaysk missile base to mark the removal of its Soviet nuclear warheads.
Q 15Which US state is nicknamed 'The Sunflower State' and has the sunflower as its state flower?
Kansas
Kansas made the wild sunflower its state flower in 1903, in a law that praised it as 'a flower that a child can draw on a slate'.
Q 16Striped-hulled sunflower kernels sold for snacking are known in the trade as what?
Confectionery
Confectionery is the trade term for the large, striped-hull seeds sold for snacking; the smaller black-hulled oil type has thinner shells and a higher fat content.
Q 17Once the hull is removed, what is the edible part of a sunflower seed called?
The heart
The heart is the trade name for the kernel left once the hull is cracked away; processors sell hearts raw or roasted, and bakers fold them into bread.
Q 18Players of which US sport are famous for chewing sunflower seeds during games?
Baseball
Baseball players took up sunflower seeds as a substitute for chewing tobacco, which a 2016 labour deal barred every new Major League player from using.
Q 19Sunflower seed spread is often used in schools as a substitute for what?
Peanut butter, for nut-allergic children
'Peanut butter, for nut-allergic children' is what it replaces: SunButter is made the same way, by grinding roasted seeds, and it turns green in baked goods when chlorogenic acid meets baking soda.
Q 20Besides cooking, sunflower oil is used to make margarine and which fuel?
Biodiesel
Biodiesel is made by reacting the oil with methanol, because raw vegetable oil is far thicker than diesel and leaves deposits that wear an engine out.
Tomato soup
Tomato soup hit the glass at the National Gallery on 14 October 2022; the painting was unharmed, the frame slightly damaged, and the two Just Stop Oil activists glued themselves to the wall.
Q 24Which vegetable, despite its name, is actually the tuber of a sunflower species native to North America?
The Jerusalem artichoke
The Jerusalem artichoke is a sunflower's tuber: 'Jerusalem' is thought to be a mangling of girasole, Italian for sunflower, and the tubers store inulin rather than starch, hence their reputation for causing wind.
Q 25What does wearing a sunflower lanyard signal to airport staff?
Hidden disability
Hidden disability: the lanyard, first handed out at Gatwick Airport in 2016, tells staff the wearer may need extra time or help, and nobody has to disclose a condition to get it.
Q 26In which country did students occupy the legislature for three weeks in the 2014 'Sunflower Movement'?
Taiwan
Taiwan: students held the Legislative Yuan from 18 March to 10 April 2014 against a trade-in-services pact with China, and a florist's gift of sunflowers gave the movement its name.
Q 27The sunflower is the emblem of which organisation, founded in Britain in 1944 by Donald Watson?
The Vegan Society
The Vegan Society took the sunflower as its emblem; Watson described 'vegan' as the beginning and end of 'vegetarian', and the society's sunflower trademark has certified products since 1990.
Q 28When a wasting disease killed most of California's sunflower sea stars from 2013, which prey boomed and stripped the kelp forests?
Sea urchins
Sea urchins multiplied unchecked once their many-armed hunter vanished, so scientists began breeding sunflower sea stars in captivity, hoping to return them to the sea and revive the kelp.
Q 29Sunflower oil is an especially rich source of which nutrient?
Vitamin E
Vitamin E: one tablespoon of sunflower oil supplies over a third of an adult's daily need, and the antioxidant is in the seed to stop its fats oxidising and turning rancid.
Q 30Sunflowers are often called 'allelopathic', meaning they do what?
They release chemicals that suppress other plants
They release chemicals that suppress other plants, at least when sunflower extracts are tested in the lab; gardeners blame the hulls when little grows under a bird feeder, but field results are mixed.