The sunflower in sixteenth-century Spain — a staked garden giant and a salad herb

Two Spanish printings eight years apart describe the sunflower as it actually was in Spain: a plant grown for the garden and for the pot, carrying seven competing names and a Peruvian provenance that modern genetics rejects. Fragoso in 1572 gives a recipe for eating its leaves; Monardes in 1580 says it must be staked or it will lie down, and refuses to be impressed by its turning to the sun. Neither mentions oil.