Daisies bring a sunny look to the garden
Give a child a box of crayons and a piece of paper, and ask for a flower, and you very likely will get a picture of a daisy.
Daisies also hold attraction for poets. Geoffrey Chaucer, English poet of the 14th century, wrote “…of all the floures in the mede, Thanne love I most thise floures white and rede, Swiche as men callen dayses in our toune.”
Daisies are my favorite, too. For me, a daisy is the essence of “flowerness.”
What makes a flower a daisy? The child’s daisy is a circle surrounded by strap-like petals, their bases attached to the circle. To the botanist and gardener, the meaning of “daisy” is not so simple. The botanist explains that the daisy is a composite flower made up of many small, individual florets. Those florets that make up the eye of the daisy have inconspicuous petals.
A different type of floret, the so-called ray florets, skirt the daisy’s eye, and each has one large, outward-pointing petal. The petals you actually see on a daisy flower are those from the ray florets.
What is a Daisy?
Botanically, all daisies are in the Compositae, or daisy, family. But that family also includes many other plants not commonly called daisies. Lettuce and zinnias, for example.
The daisy family has two subdivisions, one of which is exemplified by the child’s flower drawing, sunflowers, coneflowers and other daisies with “eyes.” For examples of the other subdivision, look closely at a dandelion or chicory flower; in these flowers, all the florets are ray florets, each with a single, large, strap-like petal. There is no eye to these flowers.
The original “daisy” of poetry and literature is the English daisy, Bellis perennis. These squat, cheerful flowers, with yellow discs surrounded by petals in shades from deep-rose to white, originated in the grassy fields of England. Now they are widespread in America, too. Cultivated forms have been bred to have so many rows of petals that their yellow eyes often are hidden. These plants self-sow readily to give seedlings that revert to the “wild” form with a single row of petals, in which case they sometimes are considered weeds as they invade lawns and gardens.
Nowadays, we gardeners use the word “daisy” to represent many different flowers in the daisy family. In the chrysanthemum genus, for example, there’s the ox-eye daisy (C. leucanthemum), its white petals encircling a clear yellow disc. It’s a familiar roadside plant. This plant, like the English daisy, was a native of Europe, but has firmly established itself in America (many consider it a weed).
The Erigeron genus and the aster genus also have some “daisies;” the former sometimes are called fleabanes, for their alleged ability to drive away fleas, and the latter sometimes are called Michaelmas daisies. Whereas the fleabanes generally bloom in spring and early summer, the asters bloom from late summer into fall. The list goes on.