The name comes partly from the fact that the large, yellow flowers look like the Sun, but also from the fact that the plant is heliotrophic, meaning that the plant bends to point towards the Sun as it moves across the sky. The strange thing is that Sunflower buds are heliotrophic, but once the flower blooms, they usually stop following the Sun. Instead, almost all of them will wind up permanently facing East or Southeast, towards the rising Sun.