Why am I so obsessed with explorers (don't even get me started on Marco Pollo)...in part it's because most U.S. high school students never hear the name of the great German explorer. Just Lewis and Clark.
In 1832 naturalist Prince Alexander Philipp Maximilian (1782-1867), ruler of the small state of Neuwied, Prussia [now in Germany], conducted one of the earliest expeditions to the American West to record the natural history of the region. Accompanying him were Swiss-born artist Karl Bodmer, who produced numerous drawings illustrating their travels, and David Dreidoppel, Maximilian's servant and a skilled hunter-taxidermist.
Of course I blogged about it! And I greatly fear my own sunflower is not the Maximilian, but let us not go there right now. @crescendoofpeace you were looking for seeds, but I'm afraid to send mine, unless you can identify mine and still want it. The real max is on the left:
Did someone say "Oh, let's do go there?'
Clicking on the photo below gets you to the blog (and photo source):
If they put out edible roots, they're Maximilians, which were a favored food for many Native American cultures, as well as for the explorers that followed.
Sunchokes are better known for their tubers, but they far more rarely spread by seed, whereas the Maximilian sunflowers are considered a weed in many places, despite being a beautiful and useful native.
And, surprise surprise, I have a serious thing for the explorers too, as evidenced by my poem The Dark Before the Dawn, which you commented on when I posted it some time back.
;-)
I know Maximilian seeds are tiny compared to typical edible sunflower seeds, as I purchased some years ago, but had literally zero sprout.
Not certain what the problem was; I may have simply set them out too early.
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You, enamored of the explorers? I am shocked. Not :)
I'm still trying to discern if my sunflowers are the Max variety. They produce tubers, all right, but I haven't tried eating them. And they must reseed freely. They show up all over, even where I tossed seeds in the fall and they came up in the spring. But if my life depended on it, I wouldn't trust my judgment on whether it's edible.
https://www.bhg.com/gardening/plant-dictionary/perennial/false-sunflower/
https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=hema2
This link is to the actual Maximilian sunflower, which I couldn't find on the link you provided. They don't talk about the tubers, but it does give a decent description, if not point by point means of identification.
I do have sunchokes, currently in a large pot, but I'll be planting out the tubers in the next few days. Hopefully they'll do well here.
I'd like to have Maximilians in our barnyard, and in a few clearings In our woods, as they are such an amazing nectar source for pollinators.
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Thank you for reminding me - sad to say, as much as I love this poem, I failed to save it somewhere, indexed, accessible - and a year later would likely never have found it again without you supplying the title:
The Dark Before the Dawn
I can relate, as I bookmark posts I really love, but then have to search through hundreds, if not thousands, of bookmarks.
I'm in the process of compiling all my posts again, as my last document disappeared in my hard drive crash, and it's interesting how many of them I had all but forgotten about.
But it also interesting that they still resonate with me, so at least I think I'm on the right track with how I want to present this series of books.
Now I just need to figure out how to describe them concisely.
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