With the war in Ukraine, there is new emphasis on its national flower, the sunflower, as a symbol of a resilient people and the hope that wells in each of us.
But the sunflower – so important in Europe – is not native to that continent. Rather, it is a jewel of the Americas, cultivated here by the native peoples for 5,000 years, according to Debra N. Mancoff’s lovely tome “Sunflowers” (Thames & Hudson, 2001). Sixteenth-century colonizers brought the flower and its seeds back to Europe, where a new love affair began.
Few artists are more intimately associated with the bloom than Vincent van Gogh, who festooned his little Yellow House in Arles, France, with various still lifes in which the sunflower had a starring role.
“The sunflower is mine in a way,” he once said. To which we might add that now it belongs to people of good will everywhere
