Hey Marcella, at one point I think it was you that talked about seeing if sunchokes had edible seeds like sunflowers do? Well, I came across something about that in my plant-breeding book. It says that sunchokes have an “incompatibility mechanism”, which is the technical way of saying the flowers can’t be pollinated by the same plant, or by any plant that is too similar to them genetically. Since sunchokes are propagated by tubers, the entire patch is essentially made of of clones, and won’t be able to pollinate. If you want seeds, you would need to grow another variety of sunchoke nearby, and if they’re different enough they’ll produce seed. The differences may or may not be visible.
(Sounds like a fun experiment to me. I wonder if I can make a purple-tubered variety? Or one with red flowers instead of yellow? Plant breeding: more fun than the roulette table, and you get to eat your losings!)
Sunflower tubers are Jerusalem Artichoke, also called Sun Choke, or the other variety of tuber, which is White Fuseau. The Sun Choke, is knobby round, the Fuseau is formed like an Idaho potato.
The tuber Sunflowers have no eating seed. The energy of the plant goes to growing the tubers, not the flowers. It doesn’t need seed since the tuber is the reproduction of the plant. One could say the tuber is the seed.