Tallest sunflower

The tallest sunflower measures 10.90 m (35 ft 9 in) and was grown by Alex Babich (USA, b. Ukraine) in Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA, as verified on 3 September 2025.

Having been growing them for seven years, Alex is no stranger to cultivating sunflowers (Helianthus annuus), which are close to his heart as the national flower of Ukraine, where he is originally from. He already held the accolade of growing the tallest sunflower in the USA with a plant that reached 7.67 m (25 ft 2 in) in 2022; a year later, he increased the mark to 7.95 m (26 ft 1 in). In 2024, he grew 10 sunflowers that surpassed the 20-ft (6-m) mark but did not better his 26-footer.

The seed for this world-record plant originally came from seasoned sunflower cultivator Burkhard Grendel of Germany, taken from a flower that he grew in 2024 that soared to 8.58 m (28 ft 2 in), matching the second-tallest sunflower on record. As competition gardeners regularly do, Babich often exchanges seeds with other growers of giant sunflowers around the globe.

The now world-record specimen was nicknamed "Clover" after Alex's son, Keenai, kept finding four-leaf clovers in their backyard and placing them on the plant for good luck as it was growing, which seemed to pay off! At the start of the season, Alex promised his wife that if he did go on to achieve the world record in 2025, then he would take a year off from competitive growing so that next summer the family could go camping, so her prayers seem to have been answered!

This smashes a record that had stood tall for more than a decade: the previous mark was 9.17 m (30 ft 1 in) for a sunflower grown by Hans-Peter Schiffer (Germany) in Kaarst, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, as verified on 28 August 2014.