The Difference Between Daisies & Regular Flowers
Daisies are no ordinary flowers. When you hold a bouquet of daisies in your hand, you are holding a bouquet of contradictions--weeds, composite flowers, healing plants, and a hardy, beautiful species that it took a famous botanist years to create from a weed. Does this Spark an idea?
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Daisies Have History and Healing
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The name daisy comes from the Anglo Saxon "daes eage," meaning "day's eye," and during medieval times people used daisies to cure eye problems. King Henry VIII of England ate daisies to ease serious stomach ulcer pain, gout and fever. Beginning in the 13th century, doctors used daisies for treating wounds and in modern times daisies are still used for medicinal purposes, including ointments, laxatives and blood purifiers.
Daisies Are Flowers Within Flowers
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The English daisy, Bellis perennis, is the only true daisy. The rest are numerous and often more famous relatives. The daisy is a perennial with a composite flower.The single daisy flower is really a cluster of minute flowers called disk florets and the petals are also flowers with five fused petals, called ray florets. Daisy leaf texture can be smooth or hairy and daisy flower stalks are usually longer than the leaves. Daisies have both male and female organs and are self fertile.
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Daisy Numbers Outnumber
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A healthy, enthusiastic daisy can produce 26,000 seeds per plant, while smaller varieties produce 1,300 to 4,000 seeds per plant. Research reveals that 82 percent of buried daisy seeds still grew after six years, and one percent still grew after 39 years. Botanists estimate that there are over 200 species of daisies, including the African daisy, shasta daisy, oxeye daisy, and gerbera daisy.
Daisies Are Flowers and Weeds
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People both love and hate daisies. Gardeners plant them and botanists develop different varieties. Oxeye daisies dominated pastures and crop fields across Europe and farmers with daisies in their wheat fields in Scotland had to pay an extra tax. Colonists brought oxeye daisies to the New World where they escaped cultivation and replaced native plants. English daisies are considered a serious weed problem in the northwest United States.
Luther Burbank Experiments
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The shasta daisy story is the story of Luther Burbank. At age 19, he moved from a Massachusetts farm to Santa Rosa, California, where he proclaimed the soil could grow almost anything. He cherished fond memories of the colorful oxeye daisy, L vulgare, a weed that grew in New England and he visualized a perfected oxeye, taller with a sturdier stem and larger flower.
Daisies Are Diverse
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In 1890, Luther Burbank crossed a Japanese daisy with the oxeye daisy and called it the shasta daisy, after Mount Shasta which stood near his home. He publicly released the shasta daisy in 1901,and he soon followed up with other selections called California, westralia and cold resistant Alaska. Daisies are as diverse and changeable as the wind that ripples their petals.
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- Photo Credit Image by Flickr.com, courtesy of Sharon Mollerus
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Comments
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great article.
