A Timeless History
The name is Old English: dæges eage, the day's eye, because the flower closes at dusk and opens at dawn. Chaucer, writing in the 1380s, called it the flower he loved best of all. Linnaeus gave it its Latin name in 1753: Bellis perennis — bellis probably from bellus, “pretty”, and perennis, “lasting through the years”.
SourceOxford English Dictionary — oed.com · Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland — bsbi.org
Science In Action
Ray florets — each white “petal” is a female flower, its petals fused into one strap, often pink underneath • Disc florets — the yellow centre, sixty or more tube flowers, each with both stamens and pistil • Involucre — the collar of green bracts under the head that protects all the tiny flowers at once • Nyctinasty — the rays fold over the disc at night and in dull weather, and open again in the light
SourceFlora of North America — efloras.org · Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland — bsbi.org
Arts
The daisy is the flower people put questions to: pulling its petals one by one — loves me, loves me not — a game played in dozens of languages. Painters have used it as the plainest flower in the room: Odilon Redon set a few beside poppies around 1867, long before the pastel bouquets that made him famous.
SourceArt Institute of Chicago — artic.edu, 1977.605 · Encyclopaedia Britannica — britannica.com, “Odilon Redon”
Applications Today
The daisy's family, the Asteraceae, is one of the two largest families of flowering plants — roughly one in ten species alive today — and it feeds us: lettuce, artichoke, sunflower oil and chamomile tea all come from the same composite head. The daisy itself was “bruisewort” in the old herbals, its crushed leaves laid on bruises.
SourceRoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew — kew.org · Botanical Society of Britain & Ireland — bsbi.org
One more thingCount the rays on daisy heads and Fibonacci numbers — 21, 34, 55 — turn up more often than chance allows: the spiral packing of a pine cone or a sunflower.
SourceRoyal Botanic Gardens, Kew — kew.org · Encyclopaedia Britannica — britannica.com, “phyllotaxis”
The daisy is a perennial: one plant lives for years and can flower in any month, peaking April to June.
Hours of Queen Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Spain: Fol. 104r (border with daisies, strawberries and a butterfly) — Master of the First Prayer Book of Maximilian and associates — c. 1500 — The Cleveland Museum of Art — 1963.256.104.a
