Common Sunflower (Helianthus annuus, 向日葵).
We spent our Saturday at the Hunan Botanical Garden, which was fairly deserted (it is a work day in compensating for the October national holiday) except for us and a few songbirds. Compared with the splendid floral displays of Spring, most of the individual gardens were docile and dormant; the one exception, by the north entrance, was a large circular display of thousands of sunflowers, all delightfully quixotic: some in decay, some still striving to bloom, some drooping down, some proud and upright, some resting their cumbersome orange heads on the stalks of their lesser peers, and some—a fair many—with mischievous faces carved into their disk florets.
