BELLIS PERENNIS.— THE COMMON DAISY. 
Class XIX. SYNGENESIA.— Order VII. POLYGAMIA SUPERFLUA. 
Natural Order, COMPOSITE. COMPOUND FLOWERS. 
I Root creeping ; flower-stalk leafless. — Leaves numerous, lying flat on the ground; inversely egg-shaped, 
crenate, slightly hairy, tapering at the base ; stalks from two to four inches long, round, hairy, each bearing 
a single flower, having a yellow conical disk, and a white ray tinged with purple. A variety, called the Hen 
and Chicken Daisy, sometimes occurs, in which several small stalks, bearing diminutive flowers, spring from 
the flower. Perennial : flowers from March to November, but individuals may be seen in flower at all sea- 
| sons; grows in pastures and meadows, abundantly. 
The following agreeable passages are from Leigh Hunt’s Indicator : — 
We owe a long debt of gratitude to the daisy ; and we take this opportunity of discharging a millionth 
| part of it. If we undertook to pay it all, we should have had to write such a book, as is never very likely 
J to be written, — a journal of numberless happy hours in childhood, kept with the feelings of an infant and the 
| pen of a man. For it would take, we suspect, a depth of delight and a subtlety of words, to express even the 
vague joy of infancy, such as our learned departures from natural wisdom would find it more difficult to put 
together, than criticism and comfort, or an old palate and a young relish. — But knowledge is the widening 
i and the brightening road that must conduct us back to the joys from which it led us ; and which it is des- 
I tined perhaps to secure and extend. We must not quarrel with it’s asperities, when we can help. 
We do not know the Greek name of the daisy, nor do the dictionaries inform us ; and we are not at 
present in the way of consulting books that might. We always like to see what the Greeks say to these 
' things, because they had a sentiment in their enjoyments. The Latins called it Beilis or Bellus, as much 
as to say, Nice One. With the French and Italians it has the same name as a Pearl, — Marguerite, Mar- 
! garita, or generally, by way of endearment, Margheretina. The same word was the name of a woman, and 
j occasioned infinite intermixtures of compliment about pearls, daisies, and fair mistresses. Chaucer, in his 
beautiful poem of the Flower and the Leaf, which is evidently imitated from some French poetess says, — 
And at the laste there began anon 
A lady for to sing right womanly 
A bargaret in praising the daisie, 
For as me thought among her notes sweet, 
She said “ Si douset est la Margarete.” 
( “ The Margaret is so sweet.” Our Margaret however, in this allegorical poem, is undervalued in compa- 
J rison with the laurel ; yet Chaucer perhaps was partly induced to translate it on account of its making the 
figure that it does ; for he has informed us more than once, in a very particular manner, that it was his 
favourite flower. There is a very interesting passage to this effect in his Legend of Good Women; where 
I he says, that nothing but the daisied fields in spring could take him from his books. 
Mr. Wordsworth undertakes to patronize the Celandine, because no body else will notice it; which is 
I a good reason. But though he tells us, in a startling piece of information, that 
Poets, vain men in their mood ! 
Travel with the multitude, 
yet he falls in with his old brethren of England and Normandy, and becomes loyal to the daisy. 
Be violets in their secret mews 
The flowers the wanton Zephyrs chuse ; 
Proud be the rose, with rains and dews 
Her head impearling ; 
Thou liv’st with less ambitious aim, 
Yet hast not gone without thy fame ; 
Thou art indeed, by many a claim, 
The poet’s darling. 
