Grandote Sunflower

Big branching sunflower.

It's sunflower season in Flagstaff. When I was a kid, sunflowers were these huge, dinner plate sized flowers that some people grew in their vegetable gardens to harvest the seeds. I didn't realize there were wild sunflowers until I moved to Arizona. I wonder if the seeds are edible? It seems like a lot of work for relatively little return though.

A few years ago I bought some locally harvested pinyon pine nuts. They come in the shell and must be split open, much like unshelled sunflower seeds that you buy in a convenience store. The taste is similar to the Italian pine nuts you can buy in the produce section of a grocery store for making pesto, but it's too much work.