139/365 The profound beauty of sunflowers

I've been waiting for these sunflowers in my aunt's garden to bloom, and boy, are they ever!

Just walking around the perimeter, photographing them from each direction, I found it interested to see that in each phase of growth, the sunflower heads looked very different -- almost like they were from different varieties of sunflowers.

The top photo is in the most advanced stage of growth among these three photos.

The photo below, of the bud not yet opened, reminds me of a venus flytrap or Audrey, the monster plant in Little Shop of Horrors. Don't you think those fine white hairs look like teeth? A little creepy...
And finally, these heads are fairly young. So pretty!

As I often do, I looked up sunflowers on Wikipedia to learn a little more about them. And if I found them interesting before then, I think they're even more so now.

A couple things in particular grabbed me: (1) in the bud stage, sunflowers are heliotropic -- meaning they move to follow the sun across the sky through the day; and (2) the beautiful pattern of spirals that you can see in the middle calculate as Fibonacci numbers. Apparently this allows the most efficient packing of seeds into the space. (And it makes me think of the DaVinci Code.)

Mother nature is amazing, isn't she?

Camera: Canon 40D with 60mm macro lens, 1/500 and 1/640s, f/2.8 at ISO 100 at about 7:00 p.m. in open shade and direct sunlight.