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What’s Blooming Now - September 8, 2009
Distinctive Daisies
 The season is winding down. The cool, wet summer hit a number of the annuals hard. Disease has been a problem and they just aren’t looking their best. Perennials grew taller than normal. “Floppy” has become a common descriptor.
Even so, you’ll still find plenty to love at White River Gardens, especially if you like daisies. The daisies are in the Aster family. Flowers in this family are grouped together in a head. The flower head becomes a daisy if the flowers on the rim of the head have long petals. The interior flowers have much smaller petals but are loved by bees and other insects that collect the pollen and feed on their nectar.
Purple coneflower, coreopsis, and black-eyed Susan, all daisies, bloom in early-mid summer. Annual daisies (see below) may bloom all summer. Asters and goldenrods are the highlight of autumn.
 Zinnias are a popular annual daisy. The “old-fashioned” type comes in many colors and sizes and almost always gets the disease powdery mildew. New varieties have been selected for resistance. Zinnia ‘Zowie! Yellow Flame’ and the small ‘Perfusion Cherry’ have done well for us. In this photo, you can see the flowers with large petals and the small, interior flowers.
Blanket flower (Gaillardia) usually has large petals in yellow and red. A new annual selection, ‘Red Plume’, has no large petals but each flower is enlarged and solid red. The flower head looks like a pom-pom. It is easy to grow but needs regular deadheading (removal of spent flowers) to look its best.
 For the first time ever, China asters are blooming in White River Garden. They were started from a seed mix and began to bloom in late August. This is an annual (Callistephus chinensis) that loves cool weather and often falters during Indiana summers. Planted as seed, it begins to bloom in late summer.
 Fall-blooming perennials in the aster family include our familiar Asters (we even have some shade-loving Asters), Boltonia, which looks like a white aster, and goldenrod. They are often quite tall, as you would expect from plants that have been growing all summer. One of the tallest is Maximilian sunflower (Helianthus maximilianii), reaching to 8 feet on a thick, unbranched stem. The flowers are large yellow daisies that grow from the base of each leaf. This plant spreads by rhizomes and also reseeds, so there is a tendency for it to become a pest. Grow it in full sun and average to dry soils. Avoid moist, rich soils because it will have a tendency to become (bet you guessed this) floppy. It is native to the US prairies north and west of Indiana (zones 3-9).
Mary Welch-Keesey
Consumer Horticulture Specialist
Purdue University
Dick Crum Resource Center
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