This is the first in a series of botany vlogs that I'll be posting on YouTube hosted by

yours truly and today I'm here to tell you five interesting botany-related facts.

Number 1: Sunflowers are actually made up of hundreds of tiny flowers called florets.

The brownish ones in the center are called disc florets, and the yellow ones around the

edge that we would think are petals, are called ray florets.

Number 2: The tallest redwood, sequoia sempervirens, is Hyperion, a tree in Northern California

that measures 379.3 feet tall. That's 151.18 meters, for those of you who are in metric.

Number 3: Deadly nightshade, also called belladonna, is toxic because it contains atropine. When

ingested, atropine can cause rapid heart rate, hallucinations and even seizures.

Number 4: Romans actually had greenhouses. They constructed them making thin sheets of

mica and they used hot steam to blow past flowers to make them bloom out of season.

Number 5: The first star gazer lily was bred by a man named Leslie Woodriff in 1974. It

was special because it faced upwards rather downwards, like all other cultivated lilies

of the time. Woodriff actually never saw any profits from the breeding of this new flower.

And we don't actually know what two strains of lilies were bred together to create this

new stargazer strain. And there you have it, five botanical facts

that you can break out at your next party. Which may or may not make you friends, depending

on what kind of party you're at. If you enjoyed this video, press the thumbs

up button and press the subscribe button if you'd like to keep up with future vlogs that

I post here. If you have any plant-related questions, leave

them in the comments and I'll do my best to answer some of them in future videos.