Safflower is a crop most people have never heard of โ but you've probably eaten it, fed it to birds, and (long ago) worn its color.
Safflower is a spiny plant with bright orange-yellow flowers. Its little seeds are crushed to squeeze out safflower oil โ a light, mild cooking oil.
Basis: Botany/agronomy: safflower (Carthamus tinctorius) is an oilseed crop; the oil is pressed from its seeds โ textbook.
Long before it was an oil crop, people used safflower petals to dye cloth yellow and red โ and even sold them as a cheap stand-in for costly saffron. Its species name tinctorius means โused for dyeing.โ
Basis: Textile/food history: safflower has been a dye plant since ancient Egypt and is a known saffron substitute โ well documented.
The same seeds fill many birdseed mixes โ lots of songbirds love them, and squirrels tend to leave them alone.
Basis: Common backyard-birding knowledge; safflower is a standard birdseed โ well documented.
Safflower sends down a deep taproot and shrugs off heat and dry ground, so America grows it in dry western states โ California leads by a wide margin, with Montana, Idaho and Colorado behind.
Basis: USDA NASS safflower production by state (this site's safflower quiz); safflower is a deep-rooted, drought-tolerant crop โ established.
Why California on top? A tidy story is that its long, dry summers and deep valley soils suit safflower's thirsty taproot. It fits โ but a crop's map is also shaped by history, markets, and which farmers gave it a try.
โป A hypothesis is an idea that isn't proven yet.
๐ Sources for the rankings mentioned in this note (links to the original data and retrieval dates) are on each quiz page below.