How the Sunflower Got its Name

How the Sunflower Got its Name

By
Meghna Sathiapalan

Long, long ago, in an ancient land, there was no sun. It was always dark. The people and animals were always in misery. The moon was not at all bright so there was no light, either.

“What shall we do?” the animals asked each other.
“We have no sun, it is always dark and we cannot see anything. We have to use our noses to catch our food!” the foxes complained.
“How can we keep up with this? There is simply nothing we can do,” the meerkat whispered.

“Maybe we should ask the gods to help us! Maybe they can send us some light!!” the hyena cackled hopefully.

“Okay,”
“Let’s do it!”
“What a good idea!”

So they asked the gods if they could send the some light to the animals. But the gods could not do anything because they had no source of light, either.

“Ask the Wise Elephant. He might be able to help,” the sun god (who now had no sun with him) suggested.

So the animals decided on that. They sent Ostrich because he could run very fast.

Ostrich ran for a long time until he came to the watering hole Elephant loved to bathe in. Ostrich saw Elephant’s large ears flapping in the water. Ostrich chirped out,” Greetings, Elephant! How are you?”

“Fine, thank you!” Elephant rumbled.
“The animals sent me here. They were hoping you could help them in finding a sun. We asked the gods, but they couldn’t help! Please help us! Ostrich said.
“Okay, let’s look at the problems, no sun and gods can’t help. That means….you animals should try to make a sun!” Elephant exclaimed loudly.

“Yeah, but how?” Ostrich asked.

“Wise doesn’t mean giving all the answers. So I’m going to let you figure that out by yourselves. Bye,” the elephant said and went back to his bath.

Ostrich rushed back to the animals and told them what happened. The animals searched everywhere but didn’t find anything good.

“I found a gold rock,”
“I found a yellow leaf,”
“I found a mustard feather,”

One day when Sparrow flew to find his food, she saw a sparkling golden seed. Excitedly, she took it to the other animals. But they all laughed and said, “It is too small, Sparrow. Get something else.” But this wasn’t Sparrow’s plan so she decided to plant the seed in front of her house. A day later it grew roots and a stem. Later it got leaves. After a few months the stem grew taller………..taller………..taller……..taller……and taller till all the animals could see the plant. At the very top of the plant was a bud…….

The very next day, when the animals awoke, they saw the sky was bright and the weather was sunny. All the animals leaped to the source of the light. They stopped at the tall plant.

“There! Look up into the sky!!” Rabbit cried as loud as she could. All the animals looked up and saw….. (where the bud was yesterday)…..a bright….large…..yellow……….FLOWER! It was so radiant that it lit up the whole sky.

“YAHOO!i!i!i!i! We finally got a sun!i!” all the animals shouted happily. The hyena started dancing with the rabbit, the meerkat with the snake (who was not a really good dance partner, though) and all the other enemy animals started dancing together in happiness. They all congratulated the little sparrow, who was filled with joy and pride.

At night, the flower closed up, taking away all the light from the sky and replacing it with darkness.

And from that day on, this flower has been called the sunflower.

THE END