WILL THE TRUE SHASTA DAISY STAND UP? (Or how the Ugly-Duckling of the Plant World became an indispensable and valuable garden plant)

By the Horticultural Staff at Stargazer Perennials

If you have been to our nursery, you have often heard us talk (some might say harp) on the importance and value of learning and using botanical nomenclature when choosing, purchasing and designing with landscape plants. As we have discussed before,      every plant in the world that has been discovered has been given a Latinized binomial, or two part name, that is universally recognized anywhere in the world that two botanists or serious gardeners might get together. For example, let’s discuss Leucanthemum vulgare. (I heard that groan).  Leucanthemumis derived from the Greek for ‘White flower’, and vulgare is Latin for ‘common’. Why is it important to know this for the average gardener? You would not believe the number of times I have been recommending plants for a design and when I say ‘Shasta Daisy’, the client yelps and says “No way, I have that all over the place-it’s just a weed!”  Well, that unseemly outburst means they have to sit still without fidgeting for the following lecture:

The common, or vulgar, daisy is often incorrectly called a Shasta Daisy. This is the real problem with using common names and not being familiar with botanical nomenclature. It is more correctly called an Oxeye Daisy and is a single-stemmed, stinky, weedy, gangly, ill-behaved garden urchin that self-seeds with great abandon. Never accept a gift of any so-called “Shasta Daisies” from any gardener who says they have them all over the place and they love to get rid of them. The true Shasta Daisy is a wonderful garden plant, with a fascinating history and no bad habits: As a matter of fact, most of the cultivars can’t even be grown from seed; they must be clonally propagated. Its binomial is Leucanthemum x superbum, (the x denotes a hybrid, and superbum speaks for itself) and there are many cultivars like ‘Becky’, ‘Aglaya’, and  ‘Wirral Pride’ that are strong and essential perennial garden performers that will grace any garden for many years and never spread anywhere. What’s more, the story of the Shasta Daisy is really the story of modern gardening itself, since the Shasta Daisy was the first garden perennial to be bred specifically for desired traits by Luther Burbank, who is widely regarded as the father of modern plant breeding.

The Shasta Daisy has been praised as one of Luther Burbank's most outstanding achievements. For him, the development of this classic garden flower was a true labor of love, a labor that took more than 15 years to complete. As a child growing up in Massachusetts, Burbank loved the wild oxeye daisies(Leucanthemum vulgare) that grew in fields throughout New England. This hardy little European native had been introduced accidentally by the Pilgrims and was rightly regarded by local farmers as a noxious weed. Burbank saw the wildflower as a diamond in the rough, biding its time to be made more beautiful. In 1884, Burbank purchased 4 acres near Santa Rosa, California and began developing his nursery. One of his first projects was the refinement of the oxeye. Ideally, his daisy would have flowers of extreme size with beautiful broad petals of dazzling whiteness, smooth stems and good keeping quality, on sturdy plants that bloomed early and persistently. To those ends, he planted seeds from oxeyes he had selected in New England, and allowed the flowers to be pollinated freely by the local insects. After a few seasons of saving and planting the seeds from the best of these open-pollinated daisies, he still saw no significant improvement in their flowers.

Taking the best of these sullen oxeyes, he dusted their flowers with pollen from the English field daisy (Leucanthemum maximum), a species with larger but less graceful blossoms. These new hybrids were planted at Gold Ridge Farm in Sebastopol, where they were grown ultimately in rows 700 feet or more in length. The daisies flowered in their first season (instead of requiring 2 years to reach blooming size) and bloomed earlier with larger and more abundant flowers than those of their parent species.

Seeking further improvement, Burbank dusted the best of these hybrid blossoms with pollen from the Portuguese field daisy (Leucanthemum lacustre). For the next 6 years, he selectively bred this triple hybrid, choosing from among 500,000 individual flower heads to find the few that most closely matched his ideal ensemble of qualities.

Eventually, his hybrid daisies produced gorgeous flowers that were far superior to those of any of their parent species. Burbank(Nipponanthemum nipponicum), a species with small but perfectly white flowers. Two seasons later, he had daisies with pure white flowers that were larger than the largest of any of the earlier hybrids.Luther found his new daisies to be perfect in every way, except that they lacked the glistening whiteness that he idealized for them. To gain this, he dusted his best hybrids with pollen from the Japanese field daisy

In 1901, Burbank offered his new flowers as a mixed selection, the Shasta Daisy Hybrids, naming them for Northern California's great snow-covered peak. From the first, Shasta daisies were distinct from all others. Botanically speaking, they were an entirely new species, Leucanthemum x superbum and became an immediate worldwide success. In 1904, Burbank introduced the first named varieties of Shasta Daisy: 'Alaska', 'California', and 'Westralia'. As late as 1925, he continued to offer new varieties of the flower, and further development by later plant breeders continues to this day - more than 100 named varieties have been introduced since 1901. The Shasta daisy has, in fact, the longest history of continuous popularity of any hybrid American garden flower. The strongest garden performer that I have grown to date is ‘Becky’, (with 'Snowcap' coming in a close second) which was selected for having thick, stout stems, perfect for cutflowers and that will hold up to overhead watering without flopping.

A weed? Hmmmpf! The true Shasta Daisy is a piece of American gardening history and deserves a prominent place of honor in any garden.