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Re: [SG] sunflower seeds.. reply.

On Sun, 29 Mar 1998, tmatsu wrote:

> Are you sure?? The Fall 1997 issue of Country Home's COUNTRY GARDENS
> magazine is quoted exactly below...
>
> "Sunflower roots, not the seeds, secrete a toxin that inhibits the
> germination of other plants. This natural defense, called allelopathy,
> also is exhitbited by plants such as Artemisia,barley, and black walnut
> trees..."

Dunno how they came up with that, but nothing about allelopathic chemicals
in sunflower roots shows up if you do a search of the journal database
of the National Agricultural Library, using ((allelopathic or allelopathy
or allelopathins or allelopathies) and (sunflower or Helianthus)).  Most
recent article is a 1997 report on possible bioactive flavonoids from
leaves.

Having spent many hours weeding under my research sunflowers, I
can tell you from personal experience that if there are allelopathins,
they aren't in enough concentration to beat out pigweed, lambsquarters,
knotweed, bluegrass, crabgrass, quackgrass or shattercane.

As far as seeds, the hulls are loaded with chlorogenic acid --
see Carter, JF (ed) 1978.  Sunflower science and technology.
American Society of Agronomy monograph #19, Madison, Wisc. for
a discussion of this.

Or look under the birdfeeders of anyone who feeds whole sunflower
seeds.

Kay Lancaster  kay@fern.com
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