The Daisies

By Al Lowe
Contributor

A field of daisies - the inspiration for poetry, a delight to the eye of the traveller, and a soothsayer to young lovers (he loves me - he loves me not). We have all seen summer fields full of white daisies, and I’m sure that we all think they are beautiful. The farmer may not think so, though, since the common White Daisy can be a big nuisance for agriculture. It is considered to be one of our noxious weeds.
The Oxeye Daisy (Chrysanthemum leucanthemim) does not really belong in North America at all. It was brought from the Old World. In early days, sailing ships used to require ballast in their holds. Some of this ballast was just earth. When a ship was to be re-loaded in the Americas, the ballast was simply thrown out. Along with the earth came all kinds of weed seeds, including those of our pretty daisy. It has spread all across North America since those early days.
This plant is perennial, which means that it comes up from its roots every year. It also produces a great many seeds from each flower every year. If you look carefully at a daisy flower head, you will find that it is made up of hundreds of tiny, individual flowers. The white ones around the outside are for show, and to attract insects, but each one of the tiny yellow ones in the middle produces seeds. From a single daisy plant, you can get thousands of seeds. This weed spreads around very easily and quickly. It is particularly bad in pasture fields, since cattle don’t like the taste of it, and won’t eat it.
There are domestic varieties of this daisy, most notable the Shasta Daisy. These plants have been bred mainly for size, the flowers being up to five inches across, and the plants themselves three feet high or so. There are also several kinds of Shasta Daisies, some with double petals, some with frilly centres and so on.
Daisies are members of a very large family of flowers - the Compositae or Composite family. The main characteristic of this family is that the flower heads, like those of the daisies, are made up of many small individual flowers. Many of our common plants belong to this family - dandelions, thistles, marigolds, yarrow and so on.
There are many plants which we call daisies besides the ordinary White Daisy we are talking about. The large Gloriosa Daisy is really a form of sunflower. The Painted Daisy of the garden is really a pyrethrum. The Michaelmas Daisy is an aster. Coneflowers and Black-eyed Susans are often called daisies, although they really are sunflowers.
The pretty White or Oxeye Daisy is a big problem to many farmers, but it is still a beautiful part of our summer scene. It is one of the many, many plants and animals which came to us from Europe and Asia. Not all of these immigrants were beneficial, by any means.