Orange African daisy
The genus Osteospermum (literally “bone seed” because of the hardiness of the seeds) is part of the asteraceae family of plants, which also contains sunflowers, marigolds and chrysanthemums. For some reason I was particularly drawn to this beautiful specimen. Maybe it was some sort of unconscious African race memory because it turns out this particular plant is the African daisy, native to Southern Africa! I am far more familiar with it as a white flower with a purple centre, growing profusely in inhospitable places with poor, sandy soil (it tolerates salt in the soil too, so sand dunes are not a problem) – but this orange variety is particularly attractive. Look out for it if you pay a summer visit to Sissinghurst gardens in Kent.
This is part of a series of non-food photographs that will be published every Saturday on CookSister – all previously featured photographs can be viewed on the Saturday Snapshots archive pages. All photos featured in Saturday Snapshots are available to buy as high-quality greeting cards or prints in my RedBubble store. They make gifts, for friends or for yourself!
Pretty pretty! We are planning a trip up the West Coast month end to go and see the wild flowers in their season. Hope it rains this week so that they can come out in their trillions 🙂 Hugs xx
Love the color of it!
This is a gorgeous flower! You did a great job of getting the water on the petals as well.
Our white daisies are coming out now, just a few, but they’ll be in carpets soon. We get orange ones too but they are a bit later and I’m not sure that they have quite the same centre as the white ones. I’ll have to take some pics myself and see! I never knew they grew them at Sissinghurst!