Shasta daisy
 

Can anybody help out, please? On another topic, an alt.usage.english
colleague posted:
The Shasta Daisy is no wildflower but a creation of plant breeder
Luther Burbank, who was out to develop a garden daisy of striking and
dramatic size. The best guesses at his raw material say it involved an
Oxeye Daisy (Leucanthemum sp.), the English Daisy (Bellis perennis),
and an uncertain Japanese species of Chrysanthemum.

It is named not because it is found around Mount Shasta (though it
grows perfectly well nearby) but for its large white flowers, which
Burbank likened to the snow cap on that mountain.

I replied:

What you report surprised me, so I went to the Collins *Wild Flowers
of Britain and Northern Europe*. There, the Shasta Daisy is treated as
a species, *Leucanthemum maximum*, said to be an introduction from the
Mediterranean to British Isles and Germany as a garden escape, but
with no reference to garden origin.

To the 'net, where several US sites, many using the older name
*Chrysanthemum maximum*, affirm the Burbank origin with differences in
detail, but one (Wildseed Farms) says it's from Europe, with no
mention of a garden origin.

After reading the Burbank story on
http://www.wschs-grf.pon.net/daisiesetc.htm
and the claim on
http://www.americanmeadows.com/bulk_....cfm?itemid=74
that *L. maximum* is a native of Spain and Portugal, I think we can
agree that the catalogues' Shasta daisy is likely to be *Leucanthemum*
x superbum.

But when and how did the European wild species get the American
commercial name? (Or is Collins wrong?) And are there two distinct
plants about in the wild: an original wild species and a naturalized
garden hybrid? Why, apart from web-exhaustion, can't I find a credible
older English name for the wild species?

It's relevant that the ones I grow -- hundreds of them -- have never
shown any notable tendency to variation from seed; so if it's a garden
hybrid, it's an extremely stable form. My original plants came from
gardens in two different areas of Britain.

Mike.