When my Landscape Lady suggested Delta Sunflowers for my front garden, she said they would reseed themselves year after year. Those in her own garden have done that, and she gave me my original plants from her excess of volunteers when they came up in May of 2017. My plants did make their own starts in succeeding springtimes, but not very many, which I think has something to do with the thick bark mulch. The seedlings that did emerge were not in the right places, so I had to transplant them.
Here I will insert three pictures I took on the dry east side of California’s Central Valley before I ever knew what these sunflowers were, or dreamed that this species would end up in my own garden. These shots show how well they do with no water at all, in temperatures often well above 100°, all summer long. They just keep going.
Last fall and this, I saved some flower heads from my plants, but I could not see any seeds in them. They are very stiff and prickly by the time they are dry enough to be certain the seeds will have matured. This year my second picking of them I set on the workbench as I was going into the house, and there they sat for a couple of weeks, where I walked past many times a day.
One day I noticed seeds under them – the hidden seeds had simply fallen out. I knocked each bristle brush flower hard against the wood and more seeds came out, so now I have a good collection. I can start them myself in the greenhouse and have some sturdy seedlings to plant in exactly the right spots next spring. 🙂
Gladsome Lights 
The seeds had to wait for the right time and it is good that you spotted them in time. I hope you will have a swathe of them to brighten up your garden next year.
LikeLiked by 1 person
How interesting…
I remember my mother collecting hundreds of seeds for her cottage garden. I hope yours is as colourful as hers was
Phoebe x
LikeLiked by 1 person
The original sunflowers I planted in my garden came from a purchased packet of seed. Both plant and flower were huge and beautiful. The following spring, several seedlings emerged and I allowed them to grow. To my surprise, they were nothing like the parent plant, but much like your Deltas. The goldfinches loved them and clung upside down on the “bristle brush flower” pecking away at them for hours at a time.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I wonder if those sunflowers are the same as the ones we saw growing everywhere on our trip to the Grand Canyon in ’07. I believe those were Arrowleaf Balsamroot. They seem so hardy ( and pretty). I hope your seeds all grow!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Here in Oklahoma the sunflowers show their faces in the hotest dryest most inhospitable of places. They are one of the finest gifts from God.
LikeLiked by 1 person
How nice to see sunflowers along a highway! But the dried flowers look nothing like a sunflower – how strange.
LikeLiked by 1 person