Featured Plant

Upon entering the garden through the Main Gate, the giant Monterey cypress usually draws your attention upwards to the sky. Next time you visit and stroll across the Great Meadow, take a moment to instead look down and appreciate the humble lawn daisy, Bellis perennis.

Most may be familiar with Bellis perennis as a common weed in lawns across the United States. Its dark green leaves form a small, flat rosette, a characteristic that helps it to evade the blades of a lawn mower. The rosettes yield short flowers in white and pink throughout the spring and summer. This daisy is the archetype of composite flowers—flowers that look like a single flower but are actually made up of hundreds of smaller flowers. There are two type of flowers that help achieve this effect: ray florets which mimic petals and disc florets which make up the center. In the original species, a white fringe of ray flowers surrounds cheery yellow disc flowers. Many beautiful cultivars of the plant exist, with colors of white, pink, and red as well as many plump double petal varieties. The flower head of the English daisy closes at night, a behavior known as nyctinasty.