Guardian Nature School Team Contact Blog Project Noah Facebook Project Noah Twitter

A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife

Join Project Noah!
nature school apple icon

Project Noah Nature School visit nature school

copper canyon daisy

Compositae Tagetes lemmonii

Description:

this is growing in my yard. Copper Canyon daisy grows into a perennial shrub up to about 3 feet high, and it may spread to about 5 or 6 feet wide. The 4-inch-long leaves are compound with thin leaflets, giving the foliage a sort of feathery or airy aspect. It requires little water and no fertilizer. An additional virtue is the strong aroma of the foliage; deer stay away. Commonly, Copper Canyon daisy blooms in both spring and fall. The main flowering period, however, is in late fall. The inch-wide flowers can be so dense that they hide the foliage, producing an eye-catching mound of solid golden-yellow. Copper Canyon daisy usually is readily available in nurseries. It grows in full sun or part shade.

Notes:

“Copper Canyon daisy” apparently is a relatively recent nursery-trade name given to this plant to imply it comes from Copper Canyon in northern Mexico. Tagetes lemmonii also is known as Mt. Lemmon marigold, mountain marigold, and Mexican bush marigold. As the “ii” on the end of the species name tells, this plant was named after someone with the surname of Lemmon. It is named for John Gill Lemmon and his wife Sara, who collected the plant in southeastern Arizona in the early 1880s. Descendants of plants the Lemmons took to California were introduced into the nursery trade. J.G. Lemmon began botanizing while recuperating in California after his release from a Confederate prisoner-of-war camp in Georgia. He discovered many new plants on the West Coast and later in southern Arizona. After he married at the age of 48, all the Lemmon plant collections were labeled “J.G. Lemmon and wife.” It is said that Mt. Lemmon near Tucson is named after Sara Plummer Lemmon, the first white woman to set foot on that mountain. Both the Lemmon and Plummer surnames are used in the scientific names of many Arizona plants discovered by this husband-and-wife team.

Species ID Suggestions



Sign in to suggest organism ID

2 Comments

SusanEllison
SusanEllison 12 years ago

Alice, the flowers may look like cosmo...the plant is very fragrant

alicelongmartin
alicelongmartin 12 years ago

Looks like my Cosmos, but it may have another name.

SusanEllison
Spotted by
SusanEllison

Houston, Texas, USA

Spotted on Nov 18, 2011
Submitted on Nov 18, 2011

Spotted for Mission

Related Spottings

bellis perennis Unnamed spotting Aster Woodland Sunflower

Nearby Spottings

White- Winged Dove Mourning Dove House Sparrow Common Starling
Noah Guardians
Noah Sponsors
join Project Noah Team

Join the Project Noah Team