The word daisy began as day's eye, for a flower that sleeps
The common lawn daisy shuts its whole head at night and opens again at dawn, which is probably how it got its name: day's eye. Chaucer called it the eye of the day. Its flowers also turn to follow the sun, and mowing barely slows it down.
Bellis perennis is the archetypal daisy, a European member of the aster family also called the common, lawn or English daisy. It is a low perennial, no taller than about 20 centimetres, spreading by short creeping rhizomes and forming flat rosettes of small rounded or spoon-shaped leaves. That flat habit is exactly why mowing fails to remove it from lawns. Its Latin name may mean pretty and everlasting, from bellus and perennis.
What looks like one flower is a composite head 2 to 3 centimetres wide, with white ray florets, often tipped with red, around a yellow disc, all held on a single leafless stalk and ringed by two rows of green bracts. The plant blooms from March to September and shows heliotropism, the heads tracking the sun across the sky. In good conditions it can even flower during mild winters. It is mostly self-fertilising, though some individuals are self-sterile.
Names pile up around it. Medieval people knew it as Mary's Rose, and it has also been bruisewort, woundwort and bone flower. Daisy became a girl's name and a nickname for Margaret, after marguerite, the French name for the oxeye daisy. Children have long threaded the flowers into daisy chains. The plant is also edible: young leaves go raw into salads or can be cooked, growing more astringent with age, and buds and petals can be added to sandwiches and soups. Its astringency gave it a place in herbal medicine.
Native to western, central and northern Europe, as far as the Faroe Islands, it has naturalised across temperate regions including the Americas and Australasia. It survives winters down to about minus 35 degrees Celsius, needs little care and has no serious pests. Gardeners grow double-flowered cultivars in red, pink and white, usually as biennial bedding.
Source: Bellis perennis
