184 COMPOSITE 



narrow at the base, and half clasping the stem ; stem hairy, much branched ; 

 lay scarcely longer than the disk ; fruit angular ; annual. This plant is 

 found occasionally in the southern half of England, but not in Scotland or 

 Ireland. Its stem is leaf}^, from six to twelve inches high, and the small heads 

 of yellow florets expand in July and August. It grows on moist sandy heaths, 

 or on places where water has once stood. 



43. Daisy {Bmis). 



Common Daisy (B. periiinis). — Stalk single-flowered ; leaves inversely 



egg-shaped, narrowing at the base, the margin having rounded notches ; 



perennial. Who does not love the Daisy, the little red-tipped Daisy, so like 



Hope and Faith in its constant up-looking : so cheerful in aspect, that, as the 



poet has said, " it smiles even in times unkind "? To our latest days the 



Daisy will have a charm. Mobile it can remind us that it was the first flower 



which we gathered in unlimited abundance ; the flower which in childhood 



we linked into wreaths, when we "prinked our hair with daisies" — the flower 



on whose clustering numbers we were wont to tread, and shout, " Spring is 



come, for we can set our foot on nine daisies." God has not scattered the 



daisies over green meadow or sunny hill, by our wayside or on the graves of 



our loved ones, that we should pass them unheeded, or crush them beneath 



our footstep without a thought of their grace. We have but to look into that 



star of gold and silver, to see what His hands have wrought. That star is full 



of flowers, each perfect in itself, each so wondrously constructed, that he who 



has never looked at them through a lens has not yet learned half their 



wondrous beauty, though even by a glance he may have learned to say with 



Chaucer — 



' ' Above all flouris in the mede, 

 Then love I most these flouris white and rede, 

 Soche that men callen daisies in our towne : 

 To them I have so great afFectioun, 

 As I sayd erst, when coniin is the Male, 

 That in my bed there dawith me no daie, 

 That I n' am up, and walking in the mede, 

 To see this floure against the sunne spredc, 

 "When it upriseth early by the morrow. 

 That blissl'ul sight sot'teneth my sorrow. 

 So glad ara I, when that I have presence 

 Of it, to doune it all reverence ; 

 As she that is of all floui-es the floure, 

 Fulfilled of all vertue and honoure ; 

 And evir like faire and fresh of hewe, 

 As wel in winter as in summer newe : 

 This love I evir, and shall until I die, 

 ■ All sweare I not, of this I woll not lie. 

 There loved no wight nothen in this life, 

 And Avhanne that it is eve, I renne blithe, 

 As soone as ever the sunne ginneth west. 

 To seene this floure, how it will go to rest. 

 For fear of night, so hateth she darknesse. 

 Her chere is plainly spred in the brightnesse 

 Of the sunne, for there it will unclose." 



Poets have sung its praises from oldest times, from Chaucer who called 

 it the "eye of clay," and Ben Jonson who wrote of "sweet dale's eyes," 



