#transvaal daisy

[times-of-life]

A Modern Day Classic

Photo credit: Jonathan Chua.

Gerbera daisies or the Gerbera jamesonii in the South African Gardens section of the Flower Dome.

This was under-exposed by 2/3 stop to keep the highlights.

[kehlanifenty]

[mybeadsprites]

[thesingingbullfrog]

[lindamarieansonsnaps]

[floraldictionary]

Gerbera - simple cheerfulness

The Gerbera hybrida hasn’t even existed for much more than a century, and it’s already joined the ranks behind roses, carnations, chrysanthemums, and tulips as one of the most popular flowers in the world. Maybe it’s its uncanny flowerness that does it- when you look at them they look too much like a cartoon, almost plastic, made by somebody told to sculpt the most generic flower-shape they can imagine.

What we know as the Gerbera is an intensively cultivated hybrid between two South African species, viridifolia and jamesonii- the latter named after Robert Jameson, a Scottish immigrant to South Africa who fought in the Anglo-Zulu war who dug for gold in Barberton and sent specimens of the Transvaal daisies growing there to England. However, it’s not the English that really popularised the plant. Of course, the biggest commercial benefactors of this South African native flower were (who else) the Dutch. Dutch breeding programmes made the Gerbera the way we know it today, and even now it’s still changing: a sturdier stem, brighter colours with more variety, less light response… Anything to make a ‘perfect’ flower.

If the Gerbera is the perfect semiotic base example of “flower”, then that’s all it will ever need to be. It’s the most simple, surface gesture: cheerfulness with neither depth nor history. A perfect plant of artifice.

(illustration and writing by Mira Gryseels)

[los-plantalones]

gerbera hybrida

[lindamarieansonsnaps]