GAZING AT GAZANIA

Why give it a wink?

Gazania rigens, native to South Africa, is drought tolerant, grows in poor soils, and can take full sun and lots of heat.

It's also very beautiful and the inner eyes are quite unusual

Gazania can also have silvery foliage or green foliage with silver hairs outlining the edges.

It's very low growing and would be great for a rock garden with lots of drainage.

For more great flowers, visit our host, Lisa, at Lisa's Chaos.

And now for a story:

When I was about 13, I learned from my English teacher that every plant had a scientific name. I was fascinated by this and set out to learn as many as possible. I enjoy the sounds of this botanical language very much. Gazania reminds me of some sort of Italian dessert, but of course it's not that at all. The flower is named after Theodore of Gaza from the 1300s. Rigens means rigid, perhaps due to the stiff outer ring surrounding the flower petals. These close up each night forcing the rest of the flower to close as well. I don't know of any other flower that does this each night.

You can see these rigid spikes ( or connate involucral bracts if you REALLY want to know) in the yellow background flowers in the photo below.

That's it for today.

Thanks for stopping by!

David/:0)