We have a volunteer sunflower growing in our garden. Volunteers are plants that come up on their own without being intentionally planted. In the case of our sunflower we had planted some nearby last spring. In another garden we had lots of volunteers that sprang up after deadheading the season before. Its a good idea to know what seedlings look like so if any pop up in your garden you can let them continue growing instead of weeding them out.
Winter sunflowers don’t grow as large as normal sunflowers and sometimes they have funny faces (like the one above), but here in Southern California where the winters are extremely mild, they do grow and flower.
At West Hollywood Elementary School we are playing a game with our rogue sunflower. Whoever guesses the correct height of the sunflower once it flowers gets to keep the flower (assuming the squirrels don’t get to it first).
