Sunflower: History, Culture, and Evolution invites audiences to look beyond the familiar bloom to discover sunflowers as powerful plants of food, ceremony, art, and science, shaped over millennia by human relationships and natural selection. As part of the Santa Fe Botanical Garden’s Plants and People Program, this talk by Thomas M. Antonio, Ph.D., draws on Indigenous perspectives and evolutionary insight to reveal why sunflowers continue to matter today.

Dr. Thomas Antonio has taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) for 14 years. He received his PhD in Botany from the University of Oklahoma, his doctoral research took place in Central & South America. Before IAIA he was a professor at the College of Santa Fe and took students each year to Brazil. He worked as a botanist for many years at the Chicago Botanic Garden where he authored a book on Sunflowers.