The Shasta Daisy 
generally remarked for their beauty. Acres of 
white and gold ripple in the sunshine with every 
passing breeze. 
Our Chickamauga, Gettysburg and other battle¬ 
fields have been white with daisies, d'hey were 
brought in the Canada oats, for feeding cavalry 
horses, and in due time naturalized themselves for, 
apparently, the balance of time. Little wonder the 
dreaming boy, Luther Burbank, admired them and 
planned for them a better day. If the green daisy 
plant is cut in hall, 
root and all, down 
under the snow in 
the dead of winter, 
the flower buds 
will be found. 
d'hey are ready to 
blossom as soon as 
the earliest verdure 
of spring puts forth. 
So much for one ot 
the ancestors of the 
Shasta daisy; it is 
clearly seen where it 
gets its widely avail¬ 
able qualities; the 
good without the 
evil it happily in¬ 
herits. It bears 
every mark of the 
highest culture. 
Every wild, weedy 
feature has disap¬ 
peared, and in the 
very extensive com¬ 
posite class, perhaps 
no finer flower ex¬ 
ists. 
The flower stem 
is slender, but firm, 
two feet in length, 
the foliage luxuriant and bright, and the broad 
white petaled, yellow centered flowers succeed 
each other so rapidly, that from the beginning till 
the close of its prolonged bloom-time, beds and 
borders seem, every passing day, at their beautiful 
zenith. The long stems are highly available for cut 
flowers, for which purpose the Shasta daisy is much 
used with roses. 
The plants are easily propagated by root divisions 
and cuttings. Volunteer plants are rare. Seldom 
do the flowers self-sow' their seeds; never are the 
seedlings overbearing and aggressive. In this digni¬ 
fied reserve it differs from all wild daisies; even the 
Sw^an River daisy (Brachycome iheridijolid), of 
Australia, and the starwort or aster, so-called, the 
Michaelmas daisy, are heavy seed bearers that self- 
sow and produce armies of volunteer plants. 
Daisies rank with asters as valuable flowers for 
high altitudes. Heretofore there were no daisies 
that equaled the Improved strains of asters. The 
single-flowered Shasta daisy is not the only one of this 
unusual strain. The double Shasta daisy is one of 
Mr. Burbank’s most recent developments. I hat is, 
the flower has a double and sometimes a triple row of 
petals. In a strict botanical sense, this is not a 
double flower. Daisies, asters, chrysanthemums, 
sunflowers and all the composites owe their claims to 
being double, to this 
manner of increas¬ 
ing the rows of the 
rays that form the 
corolla. 
d hey are beauti¬ 
ful, at any rate. 
The double Shasta 
daisy has not quite 
the grace and simple 
elegance of the sin¬ 
gle-flowered, yet it 
is an acq u is it ion. 
In the course of 
time, it may be full, 
fluffy, and pure 
white, as beautiful 
as the double chrys¬ 
anthemum with the 
added advantage of 
continuous bloom¬ 
ing. This is a rela¬ 
tive term. In South- 
e r n California 
where the tempera¬ 
ture varies only a 
very few^ degrees, 
continuous bloom¬ 
ing means every 
month of the year; 
in Louisiana, where 
the rotation of the seasons is marked, albeit the win¬ 
ters are mild and balmy, ten months, and in all 
Northern sections, late spring, all summer and early 
autumn. Throughout its long season of florescence, 
but one feature mars the bright faces of the daisies, 
and that is the brown disks when seed formation 
begins and ends. Every flower that begins to turn 
brown should be cut. This simple precaution adds 
very much to the bright silver and gold beauty of 
the Shasta daisies month after month. 
One feature to be admired is that these wide- 
spreading, full-hearted flowers never depend, with 
their own weight. Many flowers so constructed, 
more or less turn their faces downward. Not so 
with daisies. Every flower holds its face up, spread¬ 
ing itself to full view; covering the plants, giving 
very fine expression to the garden. 
NEW DOUBLE SHASTA DAISY 
135 
