Zinnias in Farmstead World — crop in the game, and what it is on a real farm.
The zinnia is a bright, daisy-like annual in the aster family, native to Mexico and the dry country around it, and one of the easiest cut flowers to grow.
It is a cut-and-come-again flower: the more stems are picked, the more the plant blooms, and bees and butterflies work it all summer.
A short history
Zinnias are native to Mexico and the dry country of the south-western United States, and are named for the German botanist Johann Gottfried Zinn. Aztec gardeners grew them, and breeders have since produced large double flowers in almost every color except blue.
How it is grown
Zinnias are fast, warm-season annuals in the aster family, direct-sown after frost into full sun. They tolerate heat and poor soil, and cutting the flowers encourages more blooms. Growers keep the foliage dry to limit mildew, and the flowers draw bees and butterflies to a field.
Processing and uses
Zinnias are sold by the bunch as cut flowers, at farm stands, markets and to florists. A stem lasts about a week in a vase, so growers cut often and sell fresh.
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)