"Fact of the Day: sunflower
Sunflower heads consist of 1,000 to 2,000 individual flowers joined together by a receptacle base. The large petals around the edge of a sunflower head are individual ray flowers which do not develop into seed. A sunflower is ready to harvest when the back portion of the head turns brown. Floating rafts of sunflowers were used to clean up water contaminated by the 1986 accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the former Soviet Union. The roots of the sunflower plants removed 95% of the radioactivity in the water by pulling contaminants out of the water."
Source:
Saturday July 27, 2013: Reference.com On This Day
Sunflowers pull lead out of soil too..a good thing to remember in Salem, where there is a LOT of lead in the soil.
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