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Dudo que el girasol haya florecido; ¡cuánto llueve!

Dudo que el girasol haya florecido; ¡cuánto llueve!
I doubt that the sunflower has bloomed; how much it rains!
From Lesson 240:Exclamatory degree (¡cuánto!, ¡cómo!)·Spanish (Latin America)

Questions & Answers about Dudo que el girasol haya florecido; ¡cuánto llueve!

Why do we use ¡cuánto llueve! here, and could I say ¡cómo llueve! instead?
Both are correct, but they focus on different things. ¡Cuánto llueve! focuses on the sheer amount of rain (how much it rains). If you used ¡cómo llueve!, it would focus more on the intensity or the way it is raining (how hard it is raining).
Why doesn't cuánto change its ending in this sentence?
Because it is describing a verb (llueve). When cuánto modifies a verb, it acts as an adverb, and adverbs never change gender or number. It only changes to cuánta, cuántos, or cuántas when it describes a noun (like ¡cuánta lluvia! meaning "how much rain!").
Why is it haya florecido instead of the regular present perfect ha florecido?
The phrase Dudo que (I doubt that) shows uncertainty, which triggers the subjunctive mood. Because the blooming is an action that would have already happened before now, we use the present perfect subjunctive (haya + past participle) rather than the present subjunctive.
What is the infinitive of florecido?
The infinitive is florecer, which means to bloom or flourish. To get the past participle florecido, you just drop the -er ending and add -ido, following the regular rules for -er verbs.

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