The Daisy and Sweet Pea are the Birth Flowers for the Month of April…
1. The English daisy is native to western, central and northern Europe. It is also widely naturalized in most temperate regions including North America, South America and Australia. They have been in human culture for over 5000 years.
This small daisy emerges in spring and lifts spirits because it reminds us that the earth is renewing itself again from the winter blues. It symbolizes innocence, loyalty, love, gentleness and rebirth since the Middle Ages.
The daisy is commonly placed on graves of our newly departed and larger wreaths of daisies are commonly given for the funerals of our departed.
Different cultures have many different folklore’s regarding the English daisy.
The French made a famous poem/game as love prediction with “He loves me! He loves me not!” Each petal symbolizes “he loves me” or “he loves me not”. Petals are individually pulled by a young maiden alternating from one to the other in order to discover if the object of her affection loves her. If the last petal pulled is a “he loves me” than it is believed that the boy loves her. Alternatively, if the last petal pulled is “he loves me not” then he does not love her.
The English girl believes that if she uproots a handful of grass with her eyes closed, that the number of daisies grasped, will tell her how long it will be until she is married.
The Catholic Culture believes that because the English daisy symbolizes innocence, it is “Mary’s Flower of God”. Some may say the English daisy could also be Her flower of God because of the symbol of rebirth as Her Son was reborn.
According to an old piece of German folklore, if the daisies were picked between noon and one o’clock before drying, it would bring success to any venture
An old Celtic folklore dictates that the spirits of still born children were reborn as daisies.
Pagan folklore says that the English daisy is the fairies flower and alternatively, they also provide protection against fairies.
The English daisy also is believed to offer protection against hysteria because of the packed petals. It is believed that you may be able to create calmness by hanging pictures in your home.
The English daisy thrives best in plant hardiness zones 4 through 8
2. The Gerbera daisy was discovered in South Africa in 1884, by Richard Jameson, a Scotsman. However, it is believed that they are more than 4,000 years old. The daisy was referred to as “Day’s Eye” in English history. This was in reference to the way the flower opened and closed with the sun. The primitive medicine men believed that the daisy was a cure for eye troubles because of the way the daisy followed the sun’s pattern. King Henry V111 ate daisies to cure his stomach ulcers. The Gerbera daisy was also crushed and doused in wine for over 15 days and believed to cure insanity. The Assyrians used daisies to turn grey hair dark again by mixing it with oil.
The Gerbera daisy thrives best in plant hardiness zones 9 through 11.
3. The Oxeye daisy is a native of Europe and was introduced to North America both intentionally, as an ornamental and incidentally as a contaminant of imported hay and grain seeds.
It spread rapidly and readily from agricultural lands. Oxeye daisy is currently found in every state of the U.S. It is most common in the Northeast and the Great Plains. It is less common in the South. In the late 1800’s the Oxeye daisy appeared in the northwestern United States and had spread to more than half the counties in the region by 1937. It is the most prevalent roadside weed in the Pacific Northwest. The Oxeye daisy is listed as a noxious weed in Colorado, Washington, Wyoming and Montana.
The Oxeye Daisy thrives best in plant hardiness zones 3 through 8,
4 . The Painted daisy is a Persian Insect Flower, Pyrethrum. Parts of plant are poisonous if ingested. Handling the plant may cause skin irritation or allergic reaction.
The Pyrethrum has been used for centuries as an insecticide and as a lice remedy known as Persian powder or Persian pellitory in the Middle East.. It was sold worldwide under the brand Zacherlin by Austrian industrialist J. Zacher. It is one of the most commonly used allowed non-synthetic insecticides in certified organic agriculture.
The Painted Daisy thrives best in plant hardiness zones 4 through 9
5. The Shasta daisyis a cross of the oxeye daisy and three other wild daisies. . It’s a hybrid produced in 1890 by American horticulturist Luther Burbank. Luther Burbank had a fondness for the wild oxeye daisies that grew under the elm tree in front of his family home. He was a young plant breeder who was inspired to develop the Shasta daisy by cross-pollinating it with the English field daisy, which had larger flowers than the oxeye, then dusted them with pollen from the Portuguese field daisy and their seedlings were bred selectively for six years.
These hybrids bloomed nicely, but Burbank wasn’t satisfied because he wanted a whiter, brighter flower. He took the most promising of these triple hybrids and pollinated them with the Japanese field daisy, a species with small, pure-white flowers. Once he perfected the flower, he named it after the beautiful and glistening Mt. Shasta in Northern California. He introduced his Shasta daisy hybrids in 1901.
The Shasta daisy thrives best in plant hardiness zones 5 through 8.
About the Sweet Pea:
The Sweet Pea is an annual climbing plant that reaches around 8 feet tall. It symbolizes blissful pleasure, delicate pleasure, good-bye, departure, adieu and thank you for a lovely time.
The Sweet Pea was developed by a Scottish nurseryman named Henry Eckford. Henry Eckford is the famous breeder of the Sweet Pea. Through cross breeding, he developed the sweet pea and turned it from a rather insignificant subject and transformed it into the floral sensation of the late Victorian era. It is also known as “the queen of annuals”.
The Sweet Pea thrives best in plant hardiness zones 5 through 9.
