 Wow! Our field has finally started blooming.
Most of these plants have been blooming just a
day or two. But there are still many plants that haven't bloomed
yet. We really have to watch our field now because this is the
time when damaging insects attack. For the record, I counted some plants
that had 28 leaves on them. Also, for the record, the high temperature
today was 105 F.
 This plant is what most of the field looked like on Tuesday and
Wednesday. This plant is in the late R4 stage.
 This plant is at the R5.1 stage. The R5 stage means it has started
blooming and the .1 means that 10 percent of the head is flowering or has
completed flowering. The ray flowers are the outermost flowers to which the yellow petals are attached. A flowering
head, which botanically is called an inflorescence, is actually made up of many little
flowers, as many as 1,000 to 2,000 per head. The flowers start blooming
from the outside of the head and continue blooming toward the center of the
head. It takes an individual head about 5 to 7 days to complete
blooming, but the field may be in bloom for 10 days or more.
 As you can see from this water use curve for sunflower, the bloom stage
or R5 is the peak time for water use. Based on this graph, there's a 30-day
period beginning with R1 and goes until R6 when the daily water use is above
0.3 inches of water per day. Any drought stress during that period
will cause yield losses.
 This is the reason it takes the whole field longer to bloom than an
individual plant. This is an example of heads being at different stages
of maturity. You see three heads that really haven't started blooming
yet and the next couple heads are well on their way. This could have been
caused by delayed emergence.
 The head has been blooming for a couple days already. About 40
percent of the head has bloomed or is blooming, thus it's at the R5.4 stage.
 This is the same R5.4 head from the previous photograph. Moving inward are the disk flowers that
have bloomed and next you see the pointy, dark structures called stigmas of
more disk flowers which are blooming and are receptive to pollen. The
flowers in the center haven't bloomed yet.
 Many different species of insects aid in the pollination of sunflowers.
Here's a bee that is laden with pollen. You can see yellow pollen on its
legs. |
Wow! Our field has finally started blooming.
Most of these plants have been blooming just a
day or two. But there are still many plants that haven't bloomed
yet. We really have to watch our field now because this is the
time when damaging insects attack. For the record, I counted some plants
that had 28 leaves on them. Also, for the record, the high temperature
today was 105 F.
