Instead, take a moment to brush off the non-seed material and just bag the seeds.īelow is a picture of Mountain Sunflower. But don’t do it! You will quickly learn what a pain it creates later when you try to sort-out the seeds. You may be tempted to dump the entire mess in a bag to sort out later.

The seeds, along with other plant material, end up in my palm. I rotate the head left and right to dislodge the seeds. With one hand, I grind the seed head into the upturned palm of my other hand. If it does, I remove the head from the plant. When I find a spent head, I tilt it in my hand so I can see if it contains seeds. The three types of sunflowers I find most often when I am hiking are: Mule’s Ears, Arrowleaf Balsamroot, and Mountain Sunflower. And you have probably eaten commercially produced sunflower seeds at one time or another. Most of us recognize these composite flowers because we’re familiar with their domesticated cousins. However, it’s still possible to find sunflowers. The annuals out-compete the native plants that once produced seeds that fed wild animals and people! Fields of beautiful wildflowers that once produced food for people have become monotonous oceans of inedible invasive grasses. They have been replaced by annual grasses introduced by European settlers to provide food for livestock.

Today the native bunch grasses and wildflowers that produce edible seeds are far less plentiful. At the proper time of year, they harvested seeds from grasses and wildflowers for food. Native peoples in my area practiced the “seasonal round.” This is an annual cycle in the production of food. Here’s how I harvest seeds from sunflowers (Asteraceae family) when I’m out foraging. So I thought I’d share my limited experience. There’s not much written about the actual mechanics of harvesting seeds.

Wandering willows sunflower seeds