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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. |
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