Rewilding My Lot

I’ve taken a lot of photos of sunflowers on my property here. But for a change, here’s a beauty at Headwaters at the Comal in New Braunfels, where I have done some volunteer work.

Here’s one thing I didn’t know about sunflowers, daisies, and asters: what I had thought was a single flower is actually a composite structure of several flowers that together form a head.

Each apparent petal is in fact an individual structure called a ray flower or ray floret. And the circular section in the middle is made up of several structures called disc flowers or disc florets.

The official name for this family of plants is Asteraceae, and in fact this family was originally named Compositae to reflect its composite structure. Read more here.