One of the floral decorations in the house this week is a sunflower bouquet.
Sunflowers are native to the Americas. There is some debate about where the sunflower was first domesticated. The earliest known examples of a fully domesticated sunflower were found at the Hayes site in Tennessee that date back to around 2300 B.C. There were also other remains found at the Olmec site of San Andrés dating some time before 2100 B.C. The Incas used the sunflower as an image of their sun god. Gold images of the flower, as well as seeds, were taken back to Europe early in the 16th century.