Celebrate the greatness of sunflowers

The Common Sunflower is beneficial throughout every season. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)

Published May 2, 2026, in the McAllen Monitor

Story and photos by Anita Westervelt, Texas Master Naturalist

The most common sunflower in Texas is the common sunflower, Helianthus annuus. It is found in abundance in the Rio Grande Valley – and pretty much everywhere else in Texas.

Sunflowers are one of the fastest growing plants. They are likely to be blooming during all seasons in the Rio Grande Valley, even when other plants have given up. They are in the Asteraceae family of plants, which is often informally referred to as the sunflower family.

In Texas, 20 species are the customary estimate in the genus helianthus: helia for sun, anthus for flower.

A typical sunflower scene along the side of the road. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)

Native common sunflowers are typical roadside plants; they are especially beneficial to wildlife:

·       Pollen and nectar for insects like butterflies, bees, lacewings, wasps, flies, ants and moths.

·       Pollen for grasshoppers, katydids, crickets, beetles and many other insects.

·       Seeds for squirrels, ground squirrels, rats, mice, beetles, Rio Grande turkeys, bobwhite quail and seed-eating songbirds, like sparrows, blackbirds, titmouse, finches, grackles and other birds.

·       The flowers and plants are a good source of protein and fat for deer.

·       Chachalacas and rabbits eat the leaves of sunflower plants and rabbits eat the flowers and stalks they can reach and seeds that have fallen to the ground.

·       Sunflowers are bat-friendly plants; their flowers stay open at night, attracting native night-flying insects, like moths and beetles that bats eat.

·       Sunflowers make good homes for spiders.

A Red-winged Blackbird eating seeds of Common Sunflower. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)

Sunflowers can take the heat, drought, sun, wind and the salt spray at the beach and still readily bloom and reseed.

Sunflower bud at the Beach. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)

Sunflowers are larval host plants for painted lady, American lady, bordered patch and silvery checkerspot butterflies. They are larval host plants for moths, too, like the sunflower moth, sunflower bud moth and saltmarsh caterpillar. Although in great numbers, moth larvae can cause significant damage, caterpillars are favored food for adult birds feeding nestlings.

The Asteraceae family is also called the compositae family because of a unique flower structure especially noticeable in the blooms of a sunflower. Each of the sunflower’s showy yellow outer petals is a flower, called a ray flower. Each tiny brown dot in a sunflower head’s central disc is a smaller tubular flower, called a disk flower, each with its own supply of nectar and pollen, making the sunflower a composite of many flowers on a single head.

Sunflowers are long-lived, their root base is tremendously helpful in holding the soil during our windy months. Dead stalks will continue to hold the soil.

Leave sunflower heads hanging on the dried-up stalks to feed birds, bugs and squirrels.

Dead sunflower stalks also provide homes for some species of native bees. Alternately, cut stalks off and stack at the back of a garden or near a compost pile. Bees that are above-ground nesters use hollow stems of pithy-stemmed plants.

Sunflower stalks mowed down and mulched continue to add nutrients and microorganisms to the soil long after they’ve fed their last butterfly.

Sunflowers are excellent fodder for the compost pile. Wear gloves; live and dead stalks are covered in very fine, itch-producing hairs. Decomposition is best when the debris is chopped up.

Hairs on the stem and bracts of the crown of a Common Sunflower. (Photo by Anita Westervelt)

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