Greg's mystery garden daisies

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This is one of many pages describing plants and animal life that we have in our garden. In many cases, we don't know what they are. Comments welcome.

By default the photos on this page are relatively small (“thumbnails“). Click on them to get progressively larger photos.

These are various daisy-like flowers. I think I've identified most of them. They all appear to belong to the order Asterales, and most belong to the genus “Aster”.

Osteospermum

These flowers are Osteospermum, also known as Cape daisies.

This one is clearly an Osteospermum ecklonis

Is this the same one, just a different colour, or is it a different species? I'd guess it's the same.

Marguerite daisies

When we moved into the house, there was a daisy bush in the north garden:

We didn't think about it much, and the fact wasn't blooming much seemed normal for mid-winter. It took me over a year to even take real photos of it; but it became clear that, with a little water, it was completely transformed. It has bloomed profusely almost continually from September 2007 to August 2008, drooping a little in early December as it got warmer and before we had enough water for it to recover. Now that it's getting regular water, I suspect it'll bloom the year around. Here comparison photos taken on Tuesday, 19 June 2007 and a year later on Saturday, 31 May 2008:

After some research, I came to the incorrect conclusion that there is no such thing as a daisy bush in most parts of the world—we had one in Wantadilla, but it didn't get watered and thus bloomed only in the spring. I thus assumed that it was some kind of Olearia, but Laurel Gordon put me right and confirmed that it's a Marguerite daisy. Here some more recent detail photos:

There were a number of these bushes in far too cramped conditions, so on Saturday, 2 August 2008 I transplanted two of them to a border to the south-east paddock:

There was a second one in the garden, which bloomed yellow, but which looked old and not very happy, so we pulled it out. That didn't stop it, of course, and in June 2008 we found a number of shoots which we transplanted. We'll see how that goes. They're a bit lop-sided; hopefully they'll pick up when they have space to grow.

Marigolds

If I have this right, this is a kind of Calendula.

Gazania

This is a particularly hardy plant.

“Hardy” means “capable of handling whatever the weather brings”. In Europe it tends to mean that the plant can tolerate heavy frost. Here in Australia it means that the plant can tolerate heavy drought.

I found it by chance in a bed that I hadn't ever watered. Peter Jeremy tells me that it's a Gazania, which seems reasonable, and Leonne confirms, adding that they self-seed.

More Gazanias

Leonne tells me that these are another kind of Gazania.

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