My brother-in-law Rick started harvesting sunflowers. In this case, he was harvesting the male sunflower seeds. There are male and female sunflowers, and they need to be planted next to each other for optimum seed production.  Behind the dried-up male sunflowers, there are taller, green, female sunflowers, which were pollinated–with the help of honeybees–to produce big seed heads, and they will be harvested a little later. The seeds will be used to produce sunflower oil. We have wild turkeys around here that hide in the sunflower field. I guess it’s fair to say that sunflower-seed production is a lesson about the birds and the bees!