They look great! If you leave them standing in the winter, the heads will blacken and turn down. This is a good way to encourage the desirable wild birds (actually I'm not sure what you get there but...) chickadees and nuthatches easily hang upside down to collect the seeds but nuisance birds like house sparrows have a harder time.

Beautiful. I love sunflowers :)

I was planning on leaving them as is all winter and letting the birds eat to their hearts content! We get blue jays, tree sparrows, goldfinches, chickadees and woodpeckers here. Last year was our first year feeding them so hopefully we'll get more coming.

I just love them!! I planted them a few years back in my front flower bed.I have the brownish rust colored ones and they grew fantastic in my dry east facing flowerbed ( I rarely water)I leave them overwinter for the birds and every year I find new ones coming. I never have to replant! :) I also have two very large Spruce trees in my back yard where nothing grows underneath, so i set my birdfeeder there and to my surprise the sunflower seeds dropped and grew right under the old shady dry spruce trees!!

This has been one of my all time favorite sunflowers ... just a self sown volunteer that is rather remarkable for its quality of quantity of bloom ... it is branched all the way to the bottom of the plant for a total of sixteen stems!

It's gorgeous! Do remember the name of that one? Was it by 'Ring of Fire'? Mine just have the one stalk, neither one branches. I'm just starting to grow them and next on my list is one of the branching varieties.

I think it might have come from Magic Roundabout OR a mixture obtained from Thompson and Morgan.

I also really like The Joker!

Terry

I used to grow Ring of Fire and I don't think those are them. Those are very pretty Terry! Ring of Fire has a narrower ring and it's dark red, not orangey.

I'll save seed from this plant and HOPE they'll have much the same characteristic next year ... my luck is they'll end up being a whole hodge podge!

I have not grown Ring of Fire here at my new location, I had found it to flower rather late when I tried it on the farm.

My experience with sunflowers is they will revert to regular yellow sunflowers, but it may take more than one year of "fading out" where you have some of the original characteristics.