“Why the Sunflower”, was a question I have heard many times. Specifically, why did and why does Sahana use the Sunflower as the official mascot: well, it can’t really be a mascot, but its not a logo either, as yet. Anyways, as far as I can remember, here goes:

Phase 1 was a time of constructive chaos in Sahana. We had around 80 developers working on a mashup of Sahana, termed phase1, which I’ll elaborate in a later post. Anyway, the time had come to name the software, which was appropriately and beautifully named Sahana, meaning Relief in Sinhala, a language of Sri Lanka. The next task was of course to come up with some sort of an image depicting Sahana, to be used in the web banner of the application software: I can remember the first banner having 2 images: A white dove and a Sunflower. Later version saw the dissapearence of the White Dove, and the Sunflower took over from there in all its majesty and grandeur.

Surprisingly, the Sunflower is more than appropriate to symbolize Sahana. As Dr. Francisco mentioned in the Sahana lists, “The sunflower is a symbol of hope, while the flower itself personifies the sun as a life-giving celestial entity”. It also symbolizes power, warmth and nourishment, particularly features attributed to the Sun: and rightly so: The word sunflower comes from the Greek ‘Helianthus’ : ‘Helios’ meaning ‘sun’ and ‘anthos’ meaning flower.
FTD paints a much more interesting picture: Legend tells that the Greek sun-god Helios was drowned by his uncles, the Titans, and then raised to the sky, where he became the sun. He was beloved by a mortal named Clytie, who died of her love for him. Clytie was “rooted” in her grief, and thus followed Helios’ daily journey through the sky. But, in yet another legend, it is said that Clytie, who fell in love with the God of the Sun Apollo, was a water-nymph. She was so much in love that she would sit on the ground and stare up at the sun all day long: but, Apollo never noticed her. The other Gods took pity on her and turned her into a sunflower: her legs became the sunflower’s stem, whilst her face became the flower, her golden hair the petals….Even in the form of a sunflower Clytie continues to watch her love and that is why the sunflower’s face turns to follow the path of the sun.

The sunflower’s turning as it follows the sun symbolizes deep loyalty and constancy. It is said that if a girl puts three sunflower seeds down her back, she will marry the first boy she meets. The Chinese hold the sunflower as a symbol of longevity. Incan priestesses wore large sunflower disks made of gold on their garments. In the Andes mountains, images of sunflowers were hammered into gold and placed in temples. Sunflower seeds were a sacred food to the Plains Indians in the prairie regions of North America. They placed bowls filled with sunflower seeds on the graves of their dead to nourish them on the long journey to the Happy Hunting Grounds.

And of course, the sunflower contains spirals, where the number of left spirals and the number of right spirals are successive Fibonacci Numbers!!!

Whatever the sunflower stands for, it is majestic. And a fitting image for a fitting project. Now, where is that girl with the sunflower seeds..?