White-rayed, yellow-centred heads that shut at dusk and open with the morning sun; the name is said to be a corruption of 'day's eye'
Daisy - Old English dægeseage.
Nature · Wildflowers & flowers
Daisy
Native · flowers almost all year, peak March to September · lawns and short turf
Bellis perennis — Asteraceae
The daisy is the plant of the British lawn and, in the Wildlife Trusts' words, probably our most well-known plant. Each 'flower' is a composite head of tiny yellow disc florets ringed by white ray florets, which close at night and open with the sun - the 'day's eye' behind the name.
How to spot them
- ▸A single head on a leafless stem 3-10 cm tall: yellow disc surrounded by white rays often tipped with pink
- ▸A flat rosette of spoon-shaped leaves pressed to the ground, so it survives mowing
- ▸The head closes at night and in dull weather
- ▸Look-alike: ox-eye daisy is far taller with leafy stems and heads 3-5 cm across; mayweeds have ferny leaves and branched, leafy stems
How to know it
A rosette of low spoon-shaped leaves so close to the ground that lawnmowers pass over them, with a single leafless stalk for each head
Daisy.
Petals are plucked one by one to the rhyme 'he loves me, he loves me not'
Daisy - the rhyme is associated with it in the Wildlife Trusts' account.
Each apparent flower is a composite head of many tiny florets - yellow ones in the middle, white strap-shaped ones round the edge
Daisy - disc florets and ray florets.
Told from the taller meadow relative with a leafy stem and bigger heads by being tiny, with a bare stalk and pink-tipped rays
Daisy (the ox-eye daisy, Leucanthemum vulgare, is the look-alike).
Its Latin species name means 'lasting for years'; the genus name is thought to come from the Latin for 'pretty'
Bellis perennis: perennial.
Quick-fire facts
- •Perennis means perennial; Bellis is generally taken to derive from Latin bellus, 'pretty'
- •The Old English dægesege, 'day's eye', became daisy; Chaucer called it the 'eye of day'
- •The Wildlife Trusts give the flowering time as January to December
- •Common in lawns, verges and short turf; the leaf rosette lets it survive close mowing and grazing
- •'Daisy chains' are made by slitting the stem to thread another through it
- •The rhyme 'he loves me, he loves me not' is linked to the daisy
- •The Wildlife Trusts call it 'probably our most well-known plant'
- •Pollinated by many small flies, bees and hoverflies
Drill it — 6 cards
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Sources
- The Wildlife Trusts — Common daisy