Organic Mexican Sunflower | Tithonia
Description
HEIRLOOM Easy to grow and thrumming with hummingbirds, monarch butterflies and countless beneficial pollinators, tithonia is native to North America and often quite massive. Dozens upon dozens of 3″ vivid tangerine blooms are borne on long stalks, though they’re not a favored cut flower since they bend so quite easily.
Friends, if your resident rodentia nibble all your sunflower sprouts relentlessly, grow Tithonia, whose seeds and sprouts are much less delectable to mammals of all sizes!
Classic sunflowers have one huge, main blossom on top with a dozen or so smaller secondaries that generally dissipate before frost; Mexican sunflowers bear dozens upon dozens of equal size flowers with increasing abundance all the way to frost. The 5 to 6 foot plants grow several feet wide and their silver-green velvet leaves are deeply serrate and ornamental, as well. Our seed originally came from Siskiyou Seeds in Williams, Oregon where I spent one spectacular season apprenticing with our friend and mentor Don Tipping.
At Fruition, we sow organic tithonia sunflower seeds directly into the soil after final frost.
Sow Seeds & Sing Songs,
& the whole Fruition Crew
Jenny Stark –
I wish I could clip a picture in this review. These sunflowers gave us such joy in 2021. It took awhile for them to mature, but once they did we had flowers galore. Three were planted in a grow box on our deck and we enjoyed butterflies and hummingbirds and big bumble bees all summer and late into the fall. They also grew well in our garden area. I would cut the deadheads and they just kept producing more and more flowers. They were tall–at least 7.5 feet. I do suggest some support. I tied loosely with old pantyhose to a tall trellis or stakes. Loosely is emphasized, because the way these leggy beauties sway in the breeze is wonderful…but a big wind or storm can take them down. They were the last flowering plants. (We live outside of Philadelphia)