28 July 2026

July and August are the best time of year to see sunflowers in western Pennsylvania. Most of them are true. One is false. Why?

Characteristic that helps ID	True Sunflowers	False Sunflower
Rays are just decorations	True. Rays are just decorations, no fertile parts	False! Rays are flowers with stamen or pistil
Deer eat them	Yes. 🙁	No. These taste bitter & their leaves have rough, coarse texture

Here’s a sunflower ray that is not simply a decoration. It is a flower in its own right.

Let’s look more closely.

Can you tell which sunflowers are true and false in these closeups? Remember about the rays: True=decoration, False=flower.

(closeup photos by Kate St. John)

What about these two? Tricky! The important part is hidden.

False sunflowers are prolific in Schenley Park because deer don’t eat them but there are no other sunflowers. If you want some practice comparing true and false, visit Jennings Prairie in Butler County where you’ll see:

• Tall or giant (Helianthus giganteus) TRUE
• Woodland (Helianthus divaricatus) TRUE
• Pale-leaf woodland (Helianthus strumosus) TRUE
• Jerusalem artichoke — it’s a TRUE sunflower, not an artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus)
• False or Oxeye (Heliopsis helianthoides) FALSE

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p.s. Every year I get confused about sunflowers because I ask the question backwards: “Does the ray have a fertile part?” Yes means false, no means true sunflower. Aaacck! … It’s better to think of it as “False=flower-ray”