This is an Open Thread / Coffee Hour and all topics of conversation are welcome. Did you know the Shasta Daisy was bred by Luther Burbank. -
The Shasta Daisy from Wikipedia: Luther Burbank - What is for dinner? How are you doing? What is on your mind. If you are new to Street Prophets please introduce yourself below in a comment. This is an Open Thread / Coffee Hour and all topics of conversation are welcome. Today's Coffee Hour is brought to you by Luther Burbank's Shasta Daisy.
Luther Burbank had a great fondness for the wild oxeye daisies that grew under the elm tree in front of his family home. Many years later, the young plant-breeder was inspired to develop these wildflowers for use as garden flowers, and envisioned an ideal daisy: it would have very large pure white flowers, long blooming period, and be good both as a cut flower and garden plant. In order to achieve his goals he used four different plants, creating a quadruple hybrid. He started with the oxeye daisy (Leucanthemum vulgare) and cross-pollinated it with the English field daisy (Leucanthemum maximum) which had larger flowers than the oxeye daisy. The best of these hybrids were then dusted with pollen from the Portuguese field daisy (Leucanthemum lacustre) and their seedlings were bred selectively for six years. These bloomed nicely, but Burbank wasn't satisfied yet. He wanted whiter, brighter flowers. He took the most promising of these triple hybrids and pollinated them with the Japanese field daisy (Nipponanthemum nipponicum), a species with small, pure white flowers. Finally, he got the beautiful large white daisy that he was hoping for. He named it for the lovely glistening Mount Shasta in Northern California. The Shasta daisy hybrids were introduced in 1901 after 17 years in development. City of Santa Rosa: Shasta Daisy