Tithonia, Mexican Sunflower
Everyone in North American is familiar with the sunflower, its yellow suns reaching into the sky in late summer, the heads full of seeds and bees. But are you familiar with Tithonia? Many people know it as its common name, Mexican Sunflower.
I had occasion to see this flower for the first time this summer in my mother’s garden. She heard about it from a fellow master gardener at a seed exchange in town. Thanks to Angie Fender, she now had a new flower to incorporate into her garden. Angie told her, “you have to plant these, they’re beautiful, and you won’t regret it.”
My mother planted it on the edge of the garden bed near the walkway, not knowing exactly what she was getting into at the time. The expectation was akin to growing a normal sunflower, or perhaps a zinnia, or cosmo. At first, the plant didn’t appear to be anything terribly special. In fact, as we passed it on the walkway and saw its green leaves, we bacame a little disheartened in its flower-less state. It kept growing larger as the summer days passed, but it was only leaves. Don’t get me wrong, I love hostas and coleus, but plain green leaves are nothing to write home about. Then, around midsummer, the first inklings of blooms appeared. By this time, the plant had grown into an enormous 9 foot tall monstrosity, and we were having trouble navigating the pathway that it was planted near.
The flowers started off slowly, with just one or two appearing as vibrant orange daisy like flowers. Soon, however, the plant had copious numbers of blooms and the impressive height of the Tithonia only added to it’s impressive visual impact. The flowers continued into late summer and the bees and butterflies love them. Every single flower has one, if not two, bees on them each time we squeeze by on my parent’s dimished pathway. We did have to tether the stems together after a particularly windy storm, but all in all, it weathered it well and it kept blooming right along.
My mother plans to save seeds and plant more next year, as it has proven to be quite an impressive plant. She does, however, want to plant it in quite a different location, well away from their well used pathway.
