Marguerite daisy

The name belongs to Argyranthemum frutescens, a woody based evergreen subshrub from the Canary Islands that also answers to Paris daisy. The genus grows wild only there, on Madeira and on the Savage Islands. Almost none of that reaches the label. Nurseries still sell the plant under its old name, Chrysanthemum frutescens, and the genus is sometimes still placed in Chrysanthemum outright. Three other daisies are sold as marguerite daisy as well. Golden marguerite now goes by Cota tinctoria and is still traded as Anthemis tinctoria. The others are the Shasta daisy, Leucanthemum x superbum, and the wild oxeye daisy, Leucanthemum vulgare. Two more borrow the word without belonging to any of them, since blue marguerite daisy is Felicia amelloides and cape marguerite daisy is Osteospermum ecklonis. The flower shape is shared across the wider daisy family, so a tag carrying a common name and a price answers nothing. The genus word is what decides whether the plant survives a frost.

In flower it is a rounded, bushy mound of finely cut foliage carrying many small daisy heads at once, in white, yellow or pink. The leaves are fleshy and blue green, oval to lance shaped, 1 to 3 inches long, and cut finely enough to read as fern like. The base under all that is woody, so where winters stay warm the plant is an evergreen subshrub, and where they do not it behaves as a short lived herbaceous perennial.

Garden plants are larger than the wild species in almost every dimension. The wild plant carries loose clusters of white heads with yellow centers, under an inch across, on stems 8 to 31 inches tall. The plants actually sold carry heads 1 to 3 inches across in single, semi double and double forms, in yellow, white, pink, rose or red. They stand 1 to 3 feet tall and about as wide. Pink, yellow and white are the species colors; the reds and the roses arrive with named cultivars.

The true marguerite daisy is frost tender: it tolerates low temperatures and does not survive being frozen. That puts it at zones 10 to 11 in the ground, and the Royal Horticultural Society files the species as H2, its rating for plants that take cold without taking a freeze. Trouble starts well before ice, since the plant is cold sensitive below 40 degrees F and dies once temperatures drop below freezing outside zones 10 through 11. Even inside that band a very cold winter can damage it. Watch the thermometer, not the zone map: one frosty night is what kills it.

The colder numbers printed under this common name belong to other plants. The one product rated from zone 3 to zone 8 as marguerite daisy is labeled Anthemis tinctoria by its own seller, and golden marguerite is hardy from zone 3 on its own account. The Shasta daisy sold under the same name sits at zones 5 to 9. Neither of those is the Canary Islands plant, and both differ from it in foliage and origin as well, golden marguerite having no patience with the hot humid summers of the deep South.

The genus word on the tag outranks the zone band printed beside it. Argyranthemum on the label means a frost tender plant, whatever number sits next to it. Where winter temperatures drop below freezing at all, cuttings taken from the plant are the standing insurance against losing it.

Marguerite daisy is a true perennial only where winter stays frost free, and in every colder climate it is grown and discarded as an annual. Even inside its perennial range it is not long lived. Two to three years is the average there, and the species is short lived at its best. In the tropics it grows on as an evergreen shrub; in a temperate garden it is a plant for one season. The plant is a perennial by nature, and the climate decides whether anyone gets to see it behave like one.

Where it does survive the winter it stays evergreen, holding its foliage on a woody base. Where it does not, the decision is best made before the purchase. Anywhere summer or winter temperatures regularly move outside the plant's comfort range, a pot is the better home, for the simple reason that a pot can be carried. Cuttings are the other route, and for the named hybrids they are the way to keep one, because those are propagated vegetatively and are not reliably raised from seed.

Full sun, soil that drains and cool air are what it asks for, and the third one decides how you deliver the first. Give it at least 6 hours of full sun in moderately rich, well draining soil, with shelter from afternoon sun in hotter climates. Keep the soil slightly acidic to neutral, a pH of 6.0 to 7.5. In a hot region that changes where the plant goes: site it so that most of its sun arrives in the morning wherever heat is extreme.

Heat is the condition that overrides the rest. Marguerite daisies prefer cool nights, may not perform well in hot climates, and turn into unstoppable bloomers where summers stay moderate, and warm, humid nights are the specific thing they cannot tolerate. Flowering is at its best at 70 degrees F or below, and a container plant is in trouble in a place that regularly runs below 40 degrees F or above 70 degrees F. Those two figures bracket the working range of the plant, and the width of that band in your garden decides how long the flowering lasts.

Water when the top inch or two has dried out, keeping the soil evenly moist and never soggy, and test it by feel, 1 to 2 inches down, before each watering. Containers change the rhythm. The same plant in a pot needs watering more often than one in open ground, and the pot has to carry adequate drainage holes of its own.

Feeding is where an eager owner does the damage. Two light schedules work: an all purpose liquid fertilizer once or twice a month through the growing season, or a monthly drench of liquid organic fertilizer through the summer. The warning attached is specific. Heavy use of all purpose fertilizer can leave a marguerite daisy scraggly and leggy, which is the same silhouette the feeding was meant to correct.

Heat is the usual reason, and on this plant the summer pause is normal. Bloom runs from late spring into early summer with a rebloom in fall, and carries straight through the summer only in milder climates. Even the heat tolerant white and yellow selections may flush out of bloom once night temperatures regularly stay in the high 70s or above. The trigger is a night temperature, so the reading that matters is the one taken after dark. When the weather turns, flowering resumes from late summer into fall.

Whether deadheading belongs in the answer depends on which plant is in the pot. Two named selections are bred to cover themselves in flower all summer with no deadheading needed, and one of them is more heat tolerant than the older marguerite daisy cultivars. On plants like those, picking off spent flowers is cosmetic. On ordinary material it still pays, since removing past blooms increases flowering and makes the plant bushier. Golden marguerite, sold under the same name, needs occasional deadheading to keep blooming, and a pinch or shear of the stem tips in mid spring to thicken it.

Age is the last cause, and the hardest one to treat. In a frost free garden the plant runs two to three years on its woody base, and a plant in its third year there has reached the end of that run. Grown as an annual it never gets that far, so a first season plant that has stopped flowering is answering to something in the weather, the light or the water.

Water is the first thing to check, and the check runs in both directions. Yellow leaves may appear when the plant is under stress from improper watering, either too much or too little. Water excess or deficiency is an environmental disorder on this plant in its own right. The excess version looks like a plant watered every morning and every evening, its leaves turning yellow and drying at the same time. Both directions look much the same on the leaf, so the answer comes from the mix underneath it.

When the watering has been corrected and the plant keeps fading, the next place to look is the roots. UC IPM's pest management guideline for this crop documents Pythium root rot, which shows as stunted plants with a reduced root system and small, rotted roots. Pythium is a soilborne water mold whose spores travel through soil and water, and excess soil moisture and poor drainage favor it. That is the link back to the first cause, because heavy watering in a pot that drains slowly builds those conditions. The measures against it are structural: avoid poorly drained soils, plant on raised beds, and reduce the amount of irrigation water.

The third cause shows at the growing tips and arrives with the weather. Downy mildew, caused by the water mold Peronospora radii, turns young tip leaves dull green, stunts them severely and rolls them downward. Cool, wet weather of 40 to 60 degrees F favors it. Dull, stunted tip leaves in a cool wet stretch are a different problem from yellowing on an over or under watered plant. The weather at the time is what separates them.

A marguerite daisy asks for little pruning, and the one cut that earns its place is a light shear in midsummer. The habit is a neat mound that needs little work, and plants can be lightly sheared once flowering slows, which brings a bushier habit and new flower buds. A tall, leggy plant can be pinched back instead, but pinching can delay flowering. That is the whole calculation in July, on an open, bare stemmed plant. A light shear costs a little time and comes back as branching. A hard pinch on a plant about to bud buys shape at the cost of the next flush.

The hard cutback heights sold under this name belong to a different plant. Golden marguerite is cut back hard to 2 to 3 inches in late fall and again to 3 to 4 inches in early to mid spring. It is an erect, clump forming, shrubby perennial of another genus. Nothing that hard is described for the tender Canary Islands plant, where the only cut is the light shear taken once a flush of flowers is over.

In a container the mix matters more than the pot. Use a high quality all purpose potting mix that drains well, and remember that beds, borders and containers are all normal homes for this plant. Where several plants share a bed or a wide bowl, set them a minimum of 1 foot apart each way. The pot is also the escape route, because a plant that can be carried indoors survives a night that would kill the same plant in open ground.

Overwintering works by keeping the plant cool and barely alive. Bring it in autumn into a cool basement or garage, somewhere the temperature holds above 50 degrees F, so that the plant goes semi dormant. Through that stretch give it only enough water to stay alive. A plant treated that way should perk up in spring, and it can then supply stem cuttings to root into new plants. Those cuttings are the reason to bother with the whole exercise. The named cultivars do not grow true from seed, so cuttings may be taken in late summer and overwintered until spring. That keeps a replacement coming even in a year when the parent does not survive.

Ten named selections, all of them true Argyranthemum, told apart by color, flower form, size and whether they ask for deadheading.

'Pure White Butterfly'

No deadheading

Upright, bushy habit
18 to 36 in tall, 12 to 20 in wide
No deadheading needed

'Golden Butterfly'

No deadheading

Sunny yellow, single petaled
18 to 36 in tall, upright
No deadheading needed

'Vanilla Butterfly'

Fades cream

Pale yellow petals aging to creamy white
Single petaled
Blooms best in summers with cool nights

'Madeira Pink'

Compact

Rose pink petals, yellow center with a dark red eye
Single petaled, daisy like
12 to 18 in

'Angelic Sweets'

Compact

Creamy white and pale yellow, maturing to coral pink
Petite flowers on a bushy plant
11 to 16 in

'Sassy Double Deep Rose'

Double

Masses of double rose pink blooms
Fern like foliage below the flowers
10 to 14 in

'Sassy Red'

Heat tolerant

Bright red with a yellow ring around the center
Heat tolerant and long blooming

'Comet Pink'

Delicate pink blooms for a cottage planting

'Percussion Fire'

Neon pink

A bold neon pink

'Everest'

More flowers than the wild type

A settled plant makes a dome 1 to 3 feet tall and about as wide, the spread tracking the height closely. It takes one to two years to reach that size, in full sun, in loam or sand. Both figures describe a plant that has been grown on, which is a different thing from the one that arrives in a pot in spring. The wild species runs smaller, at 8 to 31 inches.

Cuttings are how a named marguerite daisy is kept, because the cultivars do not come true from seed, and they may be taken from prized plants in late summer for exactly that reason. Two windows work: softwood cuttings in spring, or semi ripe cuttings of non flowering shoots, 2 to 4 inches long, in summer. Either way take a healthy stem with no flower on it, at least three inches long, snipped just below a leaf node. The shoot without a flower is the part both descriptions insist on.

Set the cutting so that at least one node sits below the surface of the potting mix, dipping the cut end in rooting hormone first if you want to speed the rooting along. After a few weeks, test it by tugging gently: resistance at the base means it has rooted. A plant kept in a pot and cut back through the season supplies this material without any special effort, and a few rooted cuttings are cheaper insurance than a replacement plant in spring.

Aphids open every pest list for this plant. Leaf miner mites, thrips and whiteflies follow them, with crown gall, powdery mildew, mold and root rot as the diseases that may come next. Broad mite and cyclamen mite, spider mites, foliage feeding caterpillars, mealybugs and vegetable leafminers are documented on it too. Given the right growing conditions, the plant is generally free of most pests and diseases. That fits a plant grown for a single season in most of the country.

1. The one poisoning entry that touches this group of plants sits under Chrysanthemum species, toxic to dogs, cats and horses, with sesquiterpene lactones and pyrethrins among the toxic principles. Its scope is Chrysanthemum, and this plant's old nursery name, Chrysanthemum frutescens, is enough to make it look as though it covered this plant too.
2. A plant that makes no flowers at all through a cool, wet spring may be carrying downy mildew, favored by wet weather of 40 to 60 degrees F. Infected plants fail to flower.
3. Where the water mold has caused trouble in a bed before, an oomycete specific fungicide at transplanting helps the plants get started.

Related Guides & Flowers

Aster

The hardy daisy for the same autumn weeks, and one that stays in the ground through the winter.

Black-eyed Susan

The daisy that takes the hot middle of summer, which is when a marguerite daisy is usually waiting it out.

Calendula

Another cool season daisy relative for pots, at its best in spring and again once the heat breaks.

Zinnia

The summer annual for the same containers, raised from seed and untroubled by heat.