The Daisy Family

Common Daisy

Whether you are in the wilds of Hampshire or Namaqualand, your own back garden or Reg’s Meadow, the odds are that you will be surrounded by flowers that are instantly recognisable as belonging to the Daisy family – Asteraceae, as botanists call it. But until not very long ago, the family was known as Compositae, for the interesting reason that their flowers are indeed compound. Each “flower” is a cluster of a large number of tiny flowers growing in one head – a sort of ready-made bouquet, if you like.

Common Daisy	Senecio – cultivated

The plants of this family typically produce one or both of two different types of flower. Each fulfils all the practical requirements of a flower, which is that it contains the sexual organs of the plant: pollen-bearing male stamens and a female ovary surmounted by a sticky stigma to which pollen sticks so as to fertilise the ovule and create a seed. A flower need in fact only contain one or the other (see June 2006 Meadow Muses on “Funny Flowers”). The reproductive organs are not so easy to see on the humble Common Daisy, but are more obvious on Senecio, a plant you may have in your own garden.

The first type of flower is called a “disk floret” and consists of very little more than this, with a small cup surrounding it. The second type is called a “ray floret” and has in addition one petal, often long and narrow, brightly coloured, and sometimes of quite a complex shape.

Ox-eye Daisy

To see how this works let’s look at a typical daisy – an Ox-eye Daisy. This has the imposing and contradictory scientific name Chrysanthemum leucanthemum, which in Greek means “Golden flower white flower.” It is closely related to our garden chrysanthemum, which is descended from a yellow wild ancestor, hence the name.

Ox-eye Daisy Bracts

An Ox-eye daisy clearly shows that it has a centre, called the disk, made up of tiny yellow disk florets. Around the outside is a single row of white ray florets. Turn the flower-head over and you will see that it has what look like sepals, the outside of the bud of a typical flower, all round its base which is slightly swollen. The swollen area is called a receptacle, and the “sepals” are bracts, which are modified leaves.

Pineapple Weed	Tansy

This pattern, of a central disk surrounded by a single line of rays, is very common in the family, both in wild and cultivated plants, including Michaelmas daisies, asters, pyrethrums, rudbeckias, and many others. But not every sort of daisy has both. Some daisies only have disk florets. The commonest wild one is the little plant often known as Pineapple Weed, because it smells of pineapple and its green flower-heads look like tiny pineapples. It is properly known as Rayless Mayweed and is closely related to the Scentless Mayweed, with conventional yellow and white flowers, that is found occasionally in the meadow. Tansy is another, and so is the garden shrub Santolina.

Dandelion	Goat's Beard	Rough Hawkbit

Much more common are other daisies that have only ray florets and are essentially "double". These include most of the yellow-flowered daisies such as Dandelion, Hawkweeds, Goat's-beard, Rough Hawkbit (the commonest yellow daisy in the meadow - easily mistaken for a dandelion, and its scientific name Leontodon in Greek means "lion's tooth"), and Ox-tongues. These at least look like daisies, with circular, flattish flower-heads.

Musk Thistle	Smooth Sowthistle
Lesser Knapweed	Greater Knapweed

A large group of the family have a flower-head which is not flat, but sits inside its cup of bracts, with the florets poking out of the top: the thistles, knapweeds and sow-thistles. The sow-thistles are yellow, but the others are generally shades of purple or mauve (very occasionally white). The meadow has various types of thistles, with rather different sizes and shapes of flower-head – Creeping thistle, Musk thistle and Spear thistle. It also has two Knapweeds, Greater and Common. Common Knapweed looks very much like a spineless thistle but Greater Knapweed has wonderfully ornamental ray florets, divided into branching fronds.

Yarrow	Mugwort

Finally there are the daisies that don’t look like any of these. Two are especially notable in the meadow. One is Yarrow, which has flat heads of small, 5-petalled flowers and could be mistaken for a plant of the Carrot family. The other is Mugwort, which has tall spikes of tiny pinkish-green flowers, and is closely related to several garden plants such as Southernwood.

 

Thistledown	Winged Seed

Many, but not all, daisies have winged seeds – thistledown, or dandelion clocks – which enable them to spread their seeds using the wind.

Globe Artichoke

The daisy family is not commonly thought of as including food plants, but this would be wrong. Some important food plants belong to this family, especially lettuce, chicory (which grows wild in Britain and has once been recorded in the meadow), globe artichokes – which are just enormous thistles – and Jerusalem artichokes, which have nothing to do with a city in the Holy Land. The name is a corruption of the French word “girasole” which means “sunflower, and the tubers are indeed from a sunflower. In addition some of the plants are aromatic and used as flavouring: tansy, tarragon, wormwood (used in absinthe and vermouth), and manzanilla (the sherry is thought to smell of it). Dandelion roots have been roasted and used for a coffee substitute, its leaves are eaten in salad and used as a diuretic (hence the old name “pissabed”, French “pisse-en-lit”).

Chicory flowers are blue, the only wild blue-flowered member of this family. Its roots, dried and ground, are traditionally used to flavour coffee, adding a bitterness to the basic flavour.

Lettuce has been an important foodstuff from ancient times, known for over 6000 years. The ancient Egyptians held lettuce sacred to the fertility god Min, and it was believed to be a powerful aphrodisiac, as well as a contraceptive! Paintings depicting it were found there in tombs from 4500BC. The Romans started their banquets with lettuce, to enhance the appetite, and are thought to have introduced the vegetable to Britain. Lettuce has sedative properties and has been used traditionally as a sleep aid, as well as to treat dropsy, colic and coughs.

So you see, it isn’t only wildlife that eats the daisies.....!