Over the summer, Dr. Kunsiri Grubbs and her two students, Thomas Harder and Zachary Taylor, continued research on the South Carolina native sunflower called helianthus schweinitzii. According to the South Carolina Wildlife Federation, the sunflower has been on the endangered list since 1991.
Grubbs started her research on this sunflower when she started working at Winthrop after working closely with Richard “Dick” Houk.
“He taught me a lot about this sunflower and helped me get started,” Grubbs said.
The helianthus schweinitzii sunflower is a prairie sunflower that grows in the south. In addition to being beautiful flowers, they are important for pollinators and wildlife in our area.
“Every now and then, transportation engineering firms that are working to expand roads request my help to transplant sunflowers that grow along the road,” Grubbs said.
Before coming to Winthrop, Grubbs researched the genus Eupatorium, a place that belongs to the sunflower family.
Part of Grubbs and her students research consists of driving around York County to identify locations where the species grow and count the plant number.
“We want to update the available data of the species found in South Carolina,” Grubbs said. “As our area becomes more developed, we have to recognize the importance of trying to keep the plants, insects, and animals that are native to this area preserved.”
Grubbs has sent DNA on this species for a national study and is working with other universities to further their knowledge about this plant.
“I have learned a great deal here such as how to collect DNA from plant specimens, make many different graphs through excel to show our data best, make maps through ArcGIS and excel, as well as record where our specimens are,” senior Thomas Harder said.
In addition to constructing graphs and logging data, Harder’s role in the research was extracting DNA from the plant leaves and recording data in the field.
Zachary Taylor, a senior working alongside Dr. Grubbs, had the role of locating current and new populations of the sunflowers in York County and updating the current population counts. This is to help decide if helianthus schweinitzii should be removed from the endangered list.
“I have learned a lot about the morphology and diversity present among the populations spread across York County as well as the threats of urbanization to current populations,” Taylor said. “I plan to continue pursuing my passion for this research in the future to identify, preserve, and grow current helianthus schweinitzii populations in our area with the goal of removing it from the endangered list.”
There are a few ways that people can help preserve these sunflowers. People can become involved by spreading awareness on the species or plant the sunflowers in their yards.
“The best part of having native plants is that they’re are tolerant of the environment conditions in our community. This sunflower is perennial so it will come back every year,” Grubbs said. “People can also get involved with organizations such as South Carolina Native Plant Society to learn about other species that grow in this region.”
These sunflowers can be found at Winthrop farm and on the campus green and will be blooming over the next two months.
