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Red sunflowers are reaching toward the sky across ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€”on campus, in community gardens and in backyards—planted months ago with seeds shared through CU ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™s One Seed program. The blooms arrive in a fitting moment as CU ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ celebrates its 150th anniversary.ÌýÌý

(Credit: Abbey Lewis)

°Õ³ó±ðÌý began with a simple idea: share one seed connected to CU ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ history and invite the community to grow it. Since launching in 2021, the program has distributed more than 7,200 red sunflower seed packets (an estimated 108,000 sunflowers) to members of the campus community and beyond. What began as a creative way to connect people with a special collection in the University Libraries archives has become a growing annual tradition, one that brings institutional history out of the archives and into gardens and neighborhoods.

This year, the program carries added meaning as CU ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ marks 150 years of learning and public service. The red sunflower’s story is uniquely tied to the university and to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ itself.Ìý

In 1910, Wilmatte Porter Cockerell, a high school biology teacher, noticed a red sunflower growing wild near her home in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½. She and her husband, Theodore Dru Allison Cockerell, a CU ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ professor and internationally known naturalist, cultivated the plant and helped make its rare red color available more widely. Today, many varieties of red sunflowers around the world are believed to be descendants of that original ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ bloom.

However, the story nearly vanished. The original Cockerell materials, including the red sunflower specimen, were almost discarded in the 1960s before CU professor and botanist William Weber intervened and saved them. More than a century following the initial discovery, the T.D.A. Cockerell Collection is housed in the University Libraries Rare and Distinctive Collections.

Through One Seed, CU ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½â€™s history is not simply being remembered; it lives in the people who preserve stories, the students who experiment with new growing methods, the staff who cultivate campus landscapes, the neighbors who plant seeds at home and the pollinators drawn to the blooms each summer.

For 150 years, the university has been shaped by people who ask questions, preserve knowledge, test ideas and share what they learn beyond campus. One Seed brings those values together in a form that is immediately visible: A flower that began as a scientific curiosity was preserved through archival care and now grows because thousands of people have chosen to take part.

By late July, the evidence is everywhere. Flowers that began as spring seed packets are now standing tall across campus and throughout the community, bright against the foothills and alive with the promise of what shared history can become. In a milestone year, One Seed offers a fitting anniversary image for CU ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½: 150 years of discovery still growing, blooming and reaching outward.

Read more about the University Libraries' One Seed program