Black Hole Sunflower

This sunflower has its own gravity.  Given the high oil content of Black seeded sunflowers (highly valued by Buffalo Bird Woman and the Hidatsa People), Black hole Sun-flower is an ideal way to produce high quality fats from your own (Sound) garden 😆.   Our largest plant on record measured 9’ 10” tall and had a seed disk 17” wide.  Seven years of breeding have focused on black oily seeds, broad dome-shaped heads, and very thick tall stocks.  The dome shaped heads make it easier to harvest the seeds from the flowerhead; as the back of the head dries it shrinks which opens gaps up between the seeds.  The challenge with many sunflowers is that the seed husk is large but a large amount of the husk’s cavity is filled with pith and therefore the kernel is small.  Black Hole-Sunflower breeding selections have prioritized dense oily kernels that fill out the husk with minimal pith.  This has also resulted in a more brittle shell that is easy to crack for extracting the kernel.