37 



THE OX-EYE DAISY. 



Like the English sparrow (Passer dotnesticus) and the cab- 

 bage butterfly (Picris rapae) there has come to us from European 

 shores, and probably earlier to that continent from Asia, a pretty 

 weed called Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum, or in common par- 

 lance, the ox-eye daisy, the word daisy being the well-known cor- 

 ruption of the Anglo-Saxon daeges-eage, day's eye, which is of 

 more than usual fitness, since at nightfall, or on the approach of 

 stormy weather, the ring of white ray florets closes gently over 

 the yellow eye, and the flower is fallen asleep. 



A long list of other common local names has been applied to 

 this much admired, much despised flower, among them being 

 white-weed, dog-daisy, bull-daisy, butter-daisy, big-daisy, mid- 

 summer-daisy, moon-daisy, horse-daisy, poorland-daisy, or 

 maudlin-daisy, dutch-morgan. moon-flower, moon-penny, great 

 white ox-eye. poverty-weed, white-man's weed and herb Mar- 

 garet. 



It is commonly distributed over the northern and eastern 

 I Inited States, less abundantly toward the South and West ; yet 

 to the friend living in northern Ohio a Xew York daisy field 

 proved a revelation of beauty never witnessed before. 



The daisy has taken kindly to our soil, and has evidently 

 come to stay. It does not ask for much ; any waste place will do, 

 and every year the whiteness grows till a veritable Milky Way 

 has dropped from the sky. Beginning with May, it claims all 

 months for its own into the fall season, but it especially loves the 

 June days and the company of the buttercups and clover and 

 swinging, blossoming grasses, and it then puts forth its best 

 show. 



Occasionally, unbidden, it nestles among the mowing fields, 

 and the practical farmer is at once upon his guard. To him, a 

 daisy is a worthless thing, exhaustive to the soil and suggestive 

 of poor land. Though the stalk be lain low and the heads al- 

 lowed to wither and die, the root remains, a perennial, and at 



