Sunflowers

I commented to Ian today that one of our sunflowers has a bud on it. That got me thinking about how much money we could save on bird food if we had room to grow a few sunflowers each year, which got us on to a conversation about sunflower oil and the fact that we weren't entirely sure which part of the sunflower the oil comes from. Of course it seemed sensible that it came from the seeds, but then as Ian pointed out, 'why is it not called sunflower seed oil'?

As you'll no doubt know the oil does indeed come from the seeds, or rather what we refer to as the seeds. In fact these are actually the fruit of the sunflower, the true seeds being encased in an inedible husk. I guess the fact that we call it olive oil and not olive fruit oil means that sunflower oil does follow the same pattern. In addition to the seed not being a seed, nor is the flower actually a flower - it is a head of numerous flowers crowded together.