And who hasn’t pulled the petals off a daisy saying “she/he loves me, she/he loves me not…”?
We are privileged in this area, in spring, to be surrounded by the most stunning varieties and colours of daisy-family flowers. They typically have bold, colourful ray florets surrounding the central disc florets, and interestingly in some species the disc florets change colour once they’ve been pollinated so that the efforts of the pollinators are not wasted!
In parts of our garden we don’t mow the ‘lawn’ from the time the first freesia leaves pop up in April/May, until the last Brunsvigia orientalis leaves have browned and dried up in October. We are rewarded by a ‘meadow’ of self-sown flowers buzzing with insects busily pollinating.
Pictured are blue Felicias, mauve Senecio elegans, golden Gousblomme, and purple Osteospermum. In the image of the Senecios you can see that the central disc florets of some of the flowers have changed from yellow to red.
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