The imm mnum'f: 



A Monthly Magazine of Natural History 



Part 45. AUGUST, 1883. Yol. 4. 



THE DAISY 



(Bellis perrenis.) 

 By J. P. SouTTER, Bishop Auckland. 



" This small flower to Nature dear, 

 While moon and stars their courses run ; 



Wreathes the whole circle of the year, 

 Companion of the sun. 



It smiles upon the lap of May, 

 To sultry August spreads its charms, 



Lights pale October on his way. 

 And twines December's arnis. 



'Tis Flora's page — in every place, 



In every season fresh or fair, 

 It opens with perennial grace 



And blossoms everywhere. 



On waste and woodland, rock and plain. 

 Its humble buds unheeded rise ; 



The rose has but a summer's reign, 

 The daisy never dies." 



As old Culpeper saith the daisy 

 needetli no description, and it is as 

 well-beloved as it is well-known, It 

 is the joy of childhood^s sportive hours, 

 and the solace of age's quieter mo- 

 menents ; it is the very robin amongst 

 flowers, as universal a favourite as it 

 is common. The Daisy belongs to the 

 largest and most generally distributed 

 Natural Order Comjposiice, which takes 

 its name from the composite structure 



of the infloresence, and by which it 

 may always be readily recognised. The 

 end of the peduncle, or flower stalk, 

 becomes broadened out and on it a 

 number of individual little flowers, 

 called florets, are arranged, as a rule 

 each one being perfect and complete 

 in itself, and the whole is surrounded 

 by a circle of scaly leaves called the 

 involucre. Beginners often mistake this 

 covering for the calyx of ordinary 

 flowers, and it certainly performs the 

 function of a common or general calyx, 

 but in this order the calyx proper of 

 each floret is either reduced to a mere 

 rim, or it is transformed into a fringe 

 of hairs, which, when mature, sur- 

 mounts the fruit in the guise of the 

 familiar thistle or dandelion down, and 

 it is then of the first importance in 

 wafting the seeds to a distance. The 

 corolla is always more or less tubular, 

 often entirely so; with five teeth, show- 

 ing the union of the five petals, as in 

 the central florets of the daisy ; at 

 other times they are prolonged into a 

 one-sided strapshaped appendage, and 

 are then called ligulate, as in the ray 

 of the daisy and the whole of the dan- 



