Reimagining the oxeye daisy.

I see you. Elegant on the roadside. Pretty in the ditch. Consoling the abandoned lot. Where soil is rotten or sodden. Where light finds slots, or not. Where the lines between dominion and disorder blur.

I watch, as you rise and spread, a ready-made meadow of little sunshines on slender stems, undulating and delicate. Your mustard eyes, rimmed with a flutter of shimmery petals, bob, nod, flirt. Love me, you say.

~

The oxeye daisy is an Old World charmer, alluring since the Iron Age. A vigorous perennial, native to European grasslands and temperate Asia, the flower crowns a nearly naked stem that springs from a rosette of glossy green toothy leaves. The solitary blossom, about the size of a baby’s palm, exudes a mix of sugar, sage, and piss, and consists of a golden center encircled by lustrous white rays. The plant, which seeds profusely and also reproduces through shallow branched roots, readily forms patches. During peak bloom season, behold a blob of throbbing day-glow ground. Eye-candy plus entirely edible, a congenial herb and easygoing traveler, the oxeye daisy has been globetrotting with or because of humans since (at least) the 1500s.

~

People transport plants from one place to another for various reasons: for food, for medicine, for building materials, for commerce. They also move plants to witness, take in, and be alongside their beauty. Gracing yards, enlivening parks, entrancing hearts, plants inspire art, become offerings, signify potential, rouse.

Sometimes however, the precious specimens accidentally spread beyond the garden, out of control.

Various reports about the oxeye daisy’s flight from domesticity attest that the plant crept out of Massachusetts Governor John Endecott’s garden in the 1600s and in two centuries, claimed the continent.

John’s government digs in Salem consisted of a two-storied Tudoresque outfit with steeply pitched gable roofs, limited flourishes, and spartan interiors. I’ve been unable to locate images of or writings about the exterior spaces. I suspect the garden was a stern mash-up of formality and utility, tidy foundation plantings of edible and ornamental flowers, like lavender, rose, hyssop, thyme, flax, violet, and of course, oxeye daisies. The beds were possibly bordered by local rocks, fronted by short picket fences, or edged with boxwood hedge.

Contained but unrestrained, the daisies fled. I picture them, a band of horrified flora, back-to-the-landers, seeking to be wild and free.

~

Before John, before Salem, back in Europe, back in Asia, way way back, oxeye daisies knew reverence and were known widely. Dedicated to Diana, presented to Isis, a symbol of Mary Magdalene, aligned with Margaret of Cortona—the patron saint of the falsely accused, homeless, single mothers, midwives, stepchildren, and tramps—the oxeye daisy stood for the feminine. As such, the plant was eventually associated with women and used to treat lady pains, “nervous excitation,” lunacy, and the “other irregularities of which maidens are subject.” In the medieval period, oxeye daisy was also prescribed broadly—in salves, tonics, stews, and brews—for wounds of skin and soul. And, among adherents to the doctrine of signatures, this day-seeing, bright white flower was applied to clouded, weary eyes.

In France, the oxeye daisy goes by marguerite, literally “pearl” from the Greek, for its resemblance to the glistening gem. Unsurprisingly, the many royal Marguerites and Margarets appropriated the plant as their emblem, embroidering the flower on their robes, emblazoning it on their couriers’ capes, on their troops’ banners.

The Latin name for this all-over all-star is Leucanthemum vulgare. Translation: common white flower. Perhaps this seems like an undignified moniker for a flower given to the gods, an inflorescence praised prolific and pure [er, fresh as a daisy?]. Or maybe it’s the perfect handle for a pale plentiful bloom, pickable nearly everywhere.

The oxeye daisy is also called Baldur’s brow, bruisewort, bull’s eye, butter daisy, dog daisy, dun daisy, espilawn, field daisy, field butter, horse daisy, horse gowan, goldings, maudlin daisy, maudlinwort, meadow pearl, mid-summer daisy, moon daisy, moon flower, moon-penny, poorland flower, poverty weed, thunder flower, white daisy, or whiteweed.

Across landscapes, in war, at peace, in honor of, for relief, each name carries stories about people and place.

~

After journeying with wind, through bird bowels, on the flanks of furried creatures, within grabby hands, get-away garden species must find new places to set root. These new places are often locations where humans have disrupted the ground, cleared vegetation, and rearranged watercourses. They are bothered, battered, and tattered places that truly need beauty, fresh life.

And so, upon the pried-open earth, raw and readied, novel gardens grow and grow.

~

In ecology, a novel ecosystem is considered a unique, self-organizing tangle of physical, biological, and social networks, brought into being, set into motion by humans, though ultimately independent from them.

Sometimes I conjure a hot, open plot, planted only with escaped vegetation. Each specimen is provided with ample space to grow. Then ready, set, go, albeit slow: I watch and track each botanical badass. Whoever takes over first, wins!

~

At the trailhead you fill the roadside swale and sway with bees on your back. Generous, numerous, numinous, luminous, you are a lush flush of mini moons floating over emerald leaves.

A notice on the kiosk declares you an aggressive, invasive, noxious, dangerous plant. Your sparkle and spirit overlooked, the sign marks another kind of tragedy of the common. Love me not, you say.

~

Within the lexicon of invasion biology, there seemingly, increasingly, exists an effort to use descriptive or neutral—rather than judgmental or violent—language. I like “neophyte,” literally from the Greek neo meaning new and phyte meaning plant, defined as a plant not native to a particular region and introduced in recent history. I also like “adventitious flora,” from the Latin adventus meaning to arrive, which refers to plants that come from elsewhere and thrive as a result of human activities.

Sometimes I daydream about designing a botanical garden of notorious neophytes. Instead of the cherished cultivars of near and far, the collection would showcase persistent adventitious flora that’s been lambasted, loathed, and let go. Rather than organizing the plants by region, climate-preference, and form (as is the norm), I’d group them according to why they arrived—for nourishment or ornament, as constituent or accident. Or I’d arrange them by how they spread—by tire or tide; via breeze, bale, or ballast; through poop or rambunctious roots. The garden would be a stunning show-and-tell of histories, appropriation, and abundance, an inversion of expectations; plants dubbed nasty, repulsive, and unruly are re-viewed anew, effulgent, beguiling, and composed.

~

“(Nothing but) Flowers,” a 1988 tune by the Talking Heads, is a cheery, catchy calypsoed melody set in the end times, whose narrator reflects on how failed cities and suburbs are progressively reclaimed by plants. Though the song’s storyteller laments sprawl’s disintegration and longs for fast food, lawnmowers, and highways, I always revel in the track’s sad/happy post-apocalyptic vibe, become spellbound by its flora-forward imagery. “Once there were parking lots / Now it’s a peaceful oasis.” “This was a discount store / Now it’s turned into a cornfield.” “This was a Pizza Hut /  Now it’s all covered with daisies.” Civilization crumbles and in the ruins, an herbal outburst.

~

The instant the daisy’s seeds sail, when their shoots take route, there is a rupture in time and terrain that shifts an existing flow; somewhere, a plant community changes. After years of grappling with it, I’ve come to consider this breach—its crisscrossing consequences of expanded passages, probable losses—a gift slit between boundaries, a chance to linger in the liminal and reimagine belonging, breakdown, and breakthrough. A chance to be with what is.

I see you, abloom in second-growth forest, pert amid fluffy duff, glazed with autumn’s tawny luster. Typically, you flower in summer. I marvel at your capacity to find home in so many seasons and spots, to nimbly inhabit our tricky, enchanted planet. Love me, you say.

~

When children chant a ditty for every floppy daisy petal they pluck, they join a lineage of daisy devotees who embraced these plants with curiosity and awe, who used them to divine the unspoken and foretell affections, who understood that all plants possess virtues, hold magic.

As messengers and agents of disturbance, oxeye daisies still remain prophetic, revealing what’s vulnerable, and what’s possible. I love them. A lot.

Jolie Kaytes is a professor of landscape architecture at Washington State University. Her work explores the importance of place and how landscapes are represented. She is a National Endowment for the Humanities grant recipient and her writing and images have appeared in numerous publications. Jolie spent her formative years in South Florida, where she wandered along shorelines, slogged through sloughs, and frolicked among subtropical flora and fauna. She currently lives in Moscow, Idaho in a region known as the Palouse.

Read “Cycling Through It,” a Letter to America, plus “Drawing from the Blast Zone” and “Recommended Reads” by Jolie Kaytes also appearing in Terrain.org.

All images by Jolie Kaytes.