72 The Museum Gazette 



PLANT-LIFE IN LONDON SQUARES. 

 The Daisy. 



We would invite those of our readers who are resident in 

 London to make occasional botanical excursions in their 

 Square gardens. Very interesting observations may often 

 be made there. 



At the present time the Daisy offers perhaps some of the 

 most attractive. Allowing its leaves to lay very low, and 

 producing its flowers with great rapidity, it defies the lawn- 

 mower, and becomes beautifully conspicuous on the close- 

 shorn turf. Being a " social flower," it occurs in patches, 

 some large and some small, some round and some irregular, 

 Everywhere they have been formed by aggressive spreading 

 at their borders. Unlike what happens with the Fairy-ring 

 fungi, its roots do not exhaust the soil, and it continues to 

 flourish year after year on the spot on which it has succeeded 

 in planting itself. It is not only social, but home-loving. 

 Thus there are no rings or crescents or semicircles, but 

 everywhere patches. Despite its reputed modesty, it is a 

 self-assertive little plant, and soon succeeds in killing off most 

 of its near neighbours. The plots become plots of daisies, 

 and of nothing else. 



It is next of interest to note the distribution of these Daisy 

 plots. They do not occur everywhere, nor, if we look care- 

 fully, at random. Large areas of the grass are quite free 

 from them. It will be seen at a glance that there are none 

 under the trees. The daisy is a lover of the sun, and in this 

 we have a clue to what might otherwise have seemed 

 puzzling as to the cause of its absence on many large 

 portions of the lawn which are not under trees. These are 

 those that are in shade during the first half of the day. 

 The Daisy is not a very early riser, and can do without sun 

 until breakfast time, but it must have it before lunch. You 

 will rarely find it growing on parts that do not get direct 



