Beneficial for whooping cough, asthma, nervous excitability and conjunctivitis
Known by botanists as Argyranthemum frutescens, Marguerite Daisy is sometimes referred to as the Boston Daisy, Cobbity Daisy, Dill Daisy, Federation Daisy, Marguerite, Marguerite Daisy, Paris Daisy, Paris Marguerite, Summer Daisy, Teneriffe Daisy and White Marguerite. It is a perennial plant from the family Asteraceae, the family of daisies. The plant is native to Canary Islands in Macaronesia. It has naturalized in Australia, New Zealand, East Europe, and Ukraine and is adventive in Norway, Germany, and Italy. It is cultivated in the horticulture trade and widely available and used as a flowering ornamental plant in private gardens and public parks. Genus name comes from Greek meaning silvery flower. Specific epithet means shrubby or bushy.
Plant Description
Marguerite Daisy is a short-lived, perennial herb or subshrub that grows about 60-180 cm tall. They can only survive under summer conditions with plenty of sun and cannot survive in areas that are cold and have no sunlight. The plants can grows easily in moderately fertile, medium-textured and well-drained soils. The plant has prostrated to erect, branched, glabrous stem. Leaves are alternate, 2–3 pinnately divided, lobes wedge-shaped to linear, ultimate margins serrated rarely entire. Pruning, pinching and deadheading help to maintain the shrub’s shape and encourage repeat blooming.
Flower & Fruit
Inflorescence a lax irregular cyme often reduced to a solitary capitulum. Involucre hemispherical cup-shaped, phyllaries in 3–4 series, free, persistent in fruit, oblanceolate or ovate to lanceolate-deltate or lanceolate, margins and tips yellow to brown, scarious, tips of inner often expanded; receptacle convex to conic. Ray flowers are 12 to >25, ray ovate to linear, female, white, sometimes pink or yellow. Disk flowers are 50–80 to >150, bisexual, fertile, corolla white, yellow (pink, red or purple), tubular, 5-deltoid lobed, anther with ovate tips, styler tip truncate, papillate. Fruit is sub terete or obovoid achene, faintly 5–8 ribbed without pappus.
These flowers grow in many different types of habitats. They are also most frequently used for borders of houses since they grow continuously. They are also known for long period of growth ranging from May to November.
