Sunflower

The Bro­ken Sun­flower Has Chal­lenged Sev­eral Great Minds and Many Good Thinkers.

When I was teach­ing Life Sci­ence and Biol­ogy we had a class project to grow a sun­flower in the class­room.  What hap­pened to that plant has stumped sev­eral good thinkers and that includes most peo­ple with whom I have shared this event.

We used a 5 gal­lon paint pail– cleaned and empty. The stu­dents brought in a cup or two of dirt from their gar­dens.  We planted  three sun­flower seeds. Then we set the pail next to our large east fac­ing windows.

We used a lit­tle fer­til­izer for­mu­lated for sun­flow­ers. We watered and mon­i­tored the mois­ture  carefully.

We watched as the seeds sprouted and grew. We decided that one plant was best and removed the other two.

Now this was win­ter yet the indoor tem­per­a­ture was just fine. The water, the soil and the sun sup­ported a good growth rate and even­tu­ally the head started to develop.

The stalk was large and a beau­ti­ful head devel­oped. It was bright yel­low and had a large group of seeds.

One morn­ing I came into the room and the stalk had bro­ken a few inches below the head. (It wasn’t van­dal­ism, just neglect of …)

Eval­u­a­tion of the process and devel­op­ment revealed that one fac­tor was miss­ing. The next year we repeated the process plus the miss­ing fac­tor and the plant made it to matu­rity with no prob­lems. It reached its full poten­tial.

The fac­tor is one that all peo­ple need as well. When this is miss­ing we too do not reach our potential.

What was the miss­ing factor?

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