286 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



Mathews gives us a pretty good figure of the Fever- 

 few just referred to, which is a tall, branching species, 

 with small flowers; the plant does not occur south of New 

 Jersey. This terse writer dismisses the common daisy in 

 a few words — all of them true enough — when he says: 

 "The commonest of all common weeds of the fields and 

 wayside, often called Farmer's Curse, yet a prime favor- 

 ite with children and artists! The flower's form is a stim- 

 mitm bonuni of simplicity and decorative beauty. The 

 orange-yellow disk, depressed in the center, is formed of 

 perfect flowers; the white rays are pistillate. The dark 

 green lca\'es are 



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ornamentally 

 lobed. 15-25 

 inches high." 



By all odds 

 the best way to 

 study daisies is 

 toget right into 

 a big field of 

 them, such as is 

 here shown in 

 Figure 1. The 

 first thing that 

 will come to 

 mind of many 

 is the old stor}- 

 of Goethe's 

 Marguerite ; 

 and, as you 

 ramble among 

 them, you can 

 almost catch 

 the words: "He 

 loves me, he 

 loves me not" 

 — for so said 

 the maiden in 

 " Faust," as she plucked and let fall, one by one, the snow- 

 white rays of the flower she held in her hand. There is 

 nothing more beautiful in all the world of wild flowers 

 than a big meadow of these very daisies in full bloom; and 

 if the warm sunshine of early summer is added to them, 

 with the rollicking song of the bobolinks thrown in, what 

 have we, among all scenes of the kind, that is mcjre en- 

 chanting throughout nature ? 



If you pull up one of these plants, you will see at once 

 that its stalk is smooth and high, and may be lengthwise 

 grooved. Occasionally you will meet with a branched 

 specimen, but not often. The stalk and leaves are of a 

 rather light green color, the leaves being alternately 

 arranged on the stalk, snugly clasping it below. Some- 

 times double flowers will be met with, and by flowers is 

 meant the entire affair that caps the upper end of the 

 stalk. This is said for the reason that the true flowers 

 are the minute, yellow, tubular growths that form the 

 depressed, subcircular center, around which are arrayed 

 the white, false "petals" or rays. This central disk be- 

 comes conical as the season advances, and a full account 

 of its stnieturc would indeed make quite a chapter. The 







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A FIELD OF WillXii uR OX-EYE DAISIES I.N MAY 



Fig. 1. — Daisies belong to the Composites or Composite family, one of the largest groups of plants in this country 

 including, as it does, a great variety of species. Among these are the familiar Golden-rods, Asters, Cockleburs, 

 Sunflowers and their numerous allies, Thistles, and many others. The word Daisy finds its origin in "Day's 

 Eye," the flower of Europe (BeUis perennis), a pink and white flower that closes in the evening and opens at 

 daylight. 



cup in which this yellow disk of closely crowded florets 

 is found is made up of a mat of green bracts, closely 

 packed together, all being finely pointed at their free 

 ends. One quaint writer at hand says of the foliage of 

 the white daisy that "its leafage is interesting and indi- 

 vidual in gesture." 



The white female florets, generally about twenty-five 

 in number, are stamenless, and, beyond their beauty, 

 possess no utility other than to attract insects to the 3'el- 

 low circlet of true flowers they surround. "Inside each 

 of these tiny yellow tubes stand the stamens," says Neltje 



Blanchan, "lit- 

 erally putting 

 their heads to- 

 gether. As the 

 pistil within the 

 ring of stamens 

 develops and 

 rises through 

 their midst , 

 two little hair- 

 brushes on its 

 tip sweep the 

 pollen from 

 their anthers, 

 as a rounded 

 l)rush would 

 remove the soot 

 from a lamp 

 chimne}'. Now 

 the pollen is 

 elevated to a 

 point where any 

 insect crawling 

 over the floret 

 must remove 

 it. The pollen 

 gone, the pistil 

 now spreads its two arms that were kept tightly closed 

 together while any danger of self-fertilization lasted. 

 Their surfaces become sticky, in that pollen brought from 

 another flower may adhere to them. Notice that the 

 pistils in the white ray florets have no hair-brushes on 

 their tips, because, no stamens being there, there is no 

 pollen to be swept out. Because daisies are among the 

 most conspicuous of flowers, and have facilitated dining 

 their visitors by offering them countless cups of refresh- 

 ment that may be drained with a minimum loss of time, 

 almost every insect on wings alights on them sooner or 

 later. In short, they run their business on the principle 

 of a cooperative department store. Immense quantities 

 of the most vigorous, because cross-fertilized, seed being 

 set in every patch, small wonder that our fields are white 

 \vith daisies — a long and merry life to them." What this 

 close student of American flowers says here will apply, 

 with great truth, to a very large number of our Compos- 

 ites; for, as a matter of fact, it applies to Asters, Sun- 

 flowers, and their multitudinous allies and representatives. 

 Passing to another group, we find an interesting one 

 in the Pink famih% which bears the scientific name of 



