Gardening
Eagle of flowers
Denis Wood
The common annual sunflower is generally not sufficiently genteel to be seen much in contrived beds and borders — it is 'so immensely . tall, and its enormous round flower heads defy the polite rules of scale and unity. But they are loved of cottagers, from childish delight .in their giantism, and to give food for their hens. Here they stand inside fences and walls, regarding the passing scene with pagan impassivity.
They are also cultivated to produce sunflower oil, as I saw driving through the hot Spanish plain between Cordoba and Granada. It is fitting that they should be here, because they must have been among the first flowers seen by Pizarro and his men when they invaded and conquered Peru, where they presented in little the flaming disc of the sun, worshipped with wholesale and atrocious human sacrifice by the Incas. The plant has been described as well by Gerard, in 1597, as by anyone since:
The Indian Sun, or the golden floure of Peru, is a plant of such stature and talnesse, that in one summer, beeing sowne of a seed in Aprill, it hath risen up to the height of fourteene foot in mY garden, where one floure was in weight three pound and two ounces, and crosse overthwart the floure by measure sixteen inches broad. The stalks are upright and straight, of the bignesse of a strong mans arme, beset with large leaves even to the top, like unto the great Clot bur: at the top of the stalk commeth forth for the most part one floure, yet many times there spring out sucking buds which come to no perfection: this great floure is in shape like to the Camomil floure, beset round about with a pale or border of goodly yellow leaves, in shape like the leaves of the floures of white Lillies: the middle part whereof is made as it were of unshorn velvet, or some curious cloath wrought with the needle: which brave worke, if you do thorowly view and marke well, it seemeth to be an innumerable sort of small floures, resembling the nose or nosle of a candlestick broken from the foot thereof; from which small nosle sweats forth
excellent fine and cleare turpentine,-in Sight, substance, savor, and tast. The Whole plate in like manner being broken smelleth of turpentine: when the plant groweth to maturitie the floures fall away, in place whereof appeareth the seed, black and large, much like the seed of Gourds, set as though a cunning Workman had of purpose placed them in very good order, much like the honycombs of bees, These plants grow of themselves Without setting or sowing, in Peru, and In divers other provinces of America, fr°n1 whence the seeds have beene brought into these parts of Europ. There flan bin seen in Spain and other hot regions a plant sowne and nourished up ffrom seed, to attaine to the height of 24 Oot in one yeare. k_The seed must be set or sowne in the .'egilloing of April, if the weather be setriPerat, in the most fertill ground that raaY be, and where the Sun hath most Wer the whole day. The flour of the Sun is called in Latine tic's Solis, for that some have reported it to turn with the Sun, which I could never observe, although I have indeavoted to finde out the truth of it: but I rather thinke it was so called because it resembles the radiant beams of the ,')Unile, whereupon some have called it '-urona Sobs, and Sol Indianus, the Indian Sunne-floure: others Chrysanthemum Peruvianum, or the Golden %tire of Peru: in English, the floure of the Sun, or the Sun-floure.
lake's has attracted poets, beside '51ake's
Ah, Sun-flower, weary of time, Who countest the steps of the Sun, Seeking after that sweet golden clime Where the traveller's journey is done: Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow Arise from their graves, and aspire Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.
Peter Quennell has a poem beginning
See, I have bent thee by thy saffron hair
— 0 most strange masker —
and James Montgomery began a poem
Eagle of Flowers! I see thee stand, And on the sun's noon-glory gaze
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