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Project Noah Nature School
Leucanthemum x superbum
Common names: Shasta Daisy. Herbaceous perennial. Zones: 5 - 9. Height: 2 - 4 feet. Width: 2 - 3 feet. Bloom time: June - July. Bloom Color: White with yellow centers.
Light: Full Sun - Part Shade. Water: Dry - Average. Perennial borders,cutting gardens and native plant gardens. Few disease or pest problems.
Beginning in 1884, Luther Burbank spent the next 35 years of his life laboring to perfect, what we now know as the Shasta Daisy & its varieties 'Alaska', 'California', and 'Westralia' and many others. Initially he worked to refine the noxious weed, wild oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare), an introduced species from Europe, by collecting seeds from the best plants that were pollinated freely by native insects. Unsatisfied with the results after a few seasons he began to hand pollinate these plants with pollen from the English field daisy (Leucanthemum maximum) and continued this process of pollination using the Portuguese field daisy (Leucanthemum lacustre) and eventually the Japanese field daisy (Nipponanthemum nipponicum), always hand selecting the best performing plants to use during this process, a process that took nearly 16 years to complete. The Shasta daisy has the longest history of continuous popularity of any hybrid American garden flower.
Spotted on Jun 29, 2012
Submitted on Jul 22, 2012
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