This weekend I decided to paint a picture of sunflowers in memory of my favorite Hetalia Axis Powers character, Russia, who is frequently seen with sunflowers in fan art. I wondered why he was always seen with sunflowers until I searched it up.

 It turns out that during the 1800’s, sunflowers covered giant fields in Russia and Ukraine. During Stalin’s era while Russia was in the Soviet Union, Soviet farmers made oil factories more productive by breeding sunflowers that had 50% more oil than regular sunflowers, thus saving America’s sunflower. I think that this made me like this character even more.