| State Flower |  |
History:
The Common Sunflower has a long history of association with people. Nearly 3,000 years ago it was domesticated for food production by the Native Americans. It was only through careful selection for the largest size seeds over hundreds of years that the cultivated sunflower was produced. Today it is a common alternative crop in the Great Plains and elsewhere for food and oil production.
When a Kansas state lawmaker attended a rodeo that was out of the state in the late 1800s, he noticed something that surprised him: other Kansans wearing sunflowers to identify themselves as being from “the Sunflower State.” Inspired by this, George Morehouse returned home and filed legislation to make the sunflower the state’s official floral emblem.
In 1903, the wild native sunflower, also known as the common sunflower, became the official state flower of Kansas. (Interestingly, less than a decade earlier, lawmakers had unsuccessfully called for the eradication of the “noxious weed.”) In their legislation, lawmakers praised the sunflower as a symbol of the state’s “frontier days, winding trails, pathless prairies” as well as the state’s present and future.
Adopted in 1903. KSA 73-1801. State flower and floral emblem. Whereas, Kansas has a native wild flower common throughout her boarders, hardy and conspicuous, of definite, unvarying and striking shape, easily sketched, moulded, and carved, having armorial capacities, ideally adapted for artistic reproduction, with its strong, distinct disk and its golden circle of clear glowing rays a flower that a child can draw on a slate, a woman can work in silk, or a man can carve on stone or fashion in clay; and
Whereas, This flower has to all Kansans a historic symbolism which speaks of frontier days, winding trails, pathless prairies, and is full of the life and glory of the past, the pride of the present, and richly emblematic of the majesty of a golden future, and is a flower which has given Kansas the world-wide name, "the sunflower state": therefore,
Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Kansas: That the helianthus or wild native sunflower is hereby made, designated and declared to be the state flower and floral emblem of the state of Kansas.
History: L. 1903, ch. 479, sec. 1; June 1; R.S. 1923, 75-3033.
Today, Sunflower oil, made from sunflower seeds, is the third most common cooking oil. The sunflower’s oil is used in cooking and the seeds are used in breads, salads and as a snack food. In recent years, sunflowers have also been grown to harvest their oil for use as an alternative biodiesel fuel. With such versatile uses, it’s easy to see why Kansans continue to be proud of their state flower!
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