Lavender in Farmstead World — crop in the game, and what it is on a real farm.
Lavender is a hardy, silver-leaved shrub of the mint family from the Mediterranean, grown for its fragrant purple flower spikes.
It likes full sun and dry, well-drained ground, bees love it, and the same crop is sold fresh, dried by the bundle or distilled for oil.
A short history
Lavender is a shrub native to the Mediterranean, used since ancient times for bathing, perfume and medicine. The Latin name comes from the word for washing. It spread through monastery gardens across Europe, and the French region of Provence is now closely associated with it.
How it is grown
Lavender wants full sun, dry, well-drained and slightly alkaline soil, and little water once established. It is hardy and bees work it heavily. Growers cut the spikes when the first buds open, because the oil is strongest then, and prune the plants after harvest to keep them tidy.
Processing and uses
Lavender is sold as fresh bunches, dried bundles and distilled essential oil, and is also used in sachets, soaps, baking and honey production. Dried lavender holds its scent for a long time.
Pumpkin vines carry separate male and female flowers and rely on bees to pollinate them — the USDA recommends one honeybee hive per acre of pumpkins. (en.wikipedia.org)
Young sunflower buds track the sun from east to west across the sky each day, then swing back east overnight — but mature flower heads stop moving and face east for good. (en.wikipedia.org)
A young sunflower's sun-following runs on an internal circadian clock and continues even on cloudy days when the sun never appears. (en.wikipedia.org)
Facing east at dawn warms a mature sunflower head quickly, which attracts more pollinating insects. (en.wikipedia.org)
A sunflower 'flower' is actually a head of hundreds of tiny florets — each yellow 'petal' around the edge is its own small, sterile ray flower. (en.wikipedia.org)
Sunflower seeds spiral in intersecting curves of 34 and 55 — neighboring Fibonacci numbers — and a very large head can show 89 and 144. (en.wikipedia.org)