Varieties of Sunflowers

Colors

• In a package of Autumn Beauty sunflower seed, you'll get a mix of orange, bronze, red and yellow-petaled flowers. Italian White and Coconut Ice yield white blooms; Ruby and Cappuccino have deep burgundy-red flowers, and Lemon Queen blooms in pale yellow. Ruby Eclipse and Strawberry Blonde are multicolored.

Forms

• Flowers of the Frilly sunflower look just as their name suggests, with fringelike petals. Teddy Bear resembles a golden chrysanthemum. Solar Flash has two-tone gold and red double flowers. The Tarahumara and Van Gogh varieties have a bright-green center, white seeds and golden petals.

Height

• Mammoth Russian and Mammoth Grey Stripe produce a single large flower on a 12- to 15-foot stalk. Smaller varieties bred for flowerbeds and containers include Tangina, with light orange blooms on 4-foot stems; Double Dandy, with double red flowers on 2-foot stems; and Soraya, a multi-stemmed yellow variety that grows only 6 inches tall.

Relatives

• Other varieties of Helianthus include the perennial Maximilian's sunflower (Helianthus maximilianii) and willowleaf sunflower (Helianthus salicifolius), which grow about 5 to 8 feet tall with multiple small golden blooms. The Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus) also produces yellow blooms but is more known for its edible tuber, the sunchoke.