BEAUTIFUL NATURE; SUNFLOWER, FLOWER OF THE SUN

Greetings to every one of you. hope you are having a great time. Let's talk about our flower of the week. Sunflower 🌻.

COMMON NAME: SUNFLOWER

SCIENTIFIC	CLASSIFICATION
Kingdom	Plantae
Clade	Tracheophytes
Clade	Angiosperms
Clade	Eudicots
Clade	Asterids
Order	Asterales
Family	Asteraceae
Subfamily	Asteroideae
Tribe	Heliantheae
Subtribe	Helianthinae
Genus	Helianthus
source:

The sunflower is a common specie of flower in this part of the world mostly considered a weed. But can it be more than just a weed? I will let you decide that.

USES OF SUNFLOWER 🌻

1. AS FOOD FOR POLLINATORS
Sunflower houses hundreds if not thousands of tiny unique florets that enclose nectar and pollen, which serves as a food source for bees.

2. AS FOOD FOR HUMANS
Sunflower seeds contain a high-quality oil, which humans often utilize to make sunflower oil, one of the best oil to cook with. Sunflower oil is deemed equal to olive or almond oil for domestic use. Cakes from sunflower oil are utilized for stock and poultry feeding, as well as soap and paint making, and as a lubricant too. The seeds can also be eaten dried or ground into nut butter.

3. DETOXING OF CONTAMINATED SOIL
Sunflowers are known as ‘phytoremediators' (meaning ‘plant remedy’) and can be used to help detox heavy metals in urban areas as they are ‘hyperaccumulators.
meaning sunflower can absorb toxic heavy metal pollutants and toxic chemicals in the soil. heavy metals such as lead, copper, chromium, zinc, arsenic, cadmium, and manganese. Isn't that awesome?

With all this said, you tell me "Is the sunflower still considered a weed or a plant?".

Thank you all for your time, you are my real MVPs.