Eyeing Miss Daisy

It’s February. you’re in love. As Valentine’s day approaches, you want to show how you feel but not with the same old box of roses. What to do?

Try daisies. For the cost of a dozen long-stemmed red beauties, you’ll get buckets of blooms that last longer and are arguably more cheerful. If a rose is a cool sophisticate, a daisy is a big-hearted country posy.

In fact, in the floral language of amour, daisies signify innocence. The mad Ophelia wove them among her “coronet weeds,” and schoolgirls sometimes wear them as crowns--that is, when they’re not plucking petals to see if somebody still loves them. A gift of daisies says simply, “I aim to please.”

Yet for all their sunny charm, daisies are a complicated bunch. They belong to the largest family of flowering plants, the Compositae, which covers more than 13,000 species. Aside from the obvious Bellis perennis (English daisy), Chrysanthemum superbum (Shasta daisy) and Leucanthemum vulgare can (common or oxeye daisy), surprise relatives include thistles, goldenrod and yarrow. Most are tough border plants that demand little and give lots, soaking up sun, blooming summer and fall and, in many cases, much longer. Some, like Arctotis, warm the soul with fiery oranges and reds. Others, like feverfew, may be useful as tonics, for complaints from colds to indigestion. The common sunflower, a daisy cousin, even has aphrodisiac possibilities, as the Mayans found when they brewed its petals into tea.

Still, not everyone appreciates Miss Daisy. Compared to a rose’s boudoir scent, its smell is musty as an old closet. And in the garden, some regard it as too easy: It grows for anyone.

But isn’t that precisely why we love it? For its guileless face and open heart? Enough coyness. Send daisies.