DAISY FLEABANE
The Compositae or daisy family is huge and its members are everywhere, from the toniest gardens to vacant lots. If you have ever cultivated–deliberately or by accident–cosmos, coreopsis, Shasta daisies, ox-eye daisies, sunflowers, helenium, chrysanthemums, Gaillardia or asters; you have been involved with daisies. These days you could fill an entire large garden with all the different varieties of coneflowers, which are also daisies. In fact, if you are a paranoid gardener, you might be forgiven for feeling that you can’t escape daisies.
Recently, I was poking around my front beds in search of space to plant a couple of new, allegedly fragrant coneflowers. I found the perfect sunny spot, but it was already home to a healthy, blooming stand of fleabane, a less celebrated member of the daisy clan. My fleabanes, which were probably Erigeron philadelphicus or Philadelphia fleabane, were wonderful examples of their type–about two feet tall, with small, daisy-shaped flowers. If they were not blooming in early summer, they might easily be mistaken for asters. Unlike some other daisies, fleabane petals or rays are extremely thin and numerous, with 40-70 on each ½ inch flower. The typical wild fleabane in my yard boasts white petals tinged with pink that surround typical yellow centers. The foliage is nothing to write home about, though the soft, somewhat hairy leaves clasp the stem, rather than simply growing from it. The flowers are held erect on the stems, but the buds droop as if waiting for their moment in the sun.
I was ready to snatch up the whole clump of fleabane and pull it out of the ground when I was struck by the irony of ridding myself of one daisy species to make room for another, more fashionable one. I also wondered if the gods of horticulture would strike me dead for allowing a common roadside weed to flourish among my expensive perennials.
For some reason fleabanes have not gotten as much media attention as some other Compositae genera. A glance at the University of Minnesota’s excellent online plant information directory shows three pages of available species and varieties, but mainstream catalog vendors carry few of them. It’s possible that those showy divas, the coneflowers and coreopsis, have simply upstaged the unassuming fleabanes.
It was not always so. Mrs. Margaret Grieve, author of A Modern Herbal, published in England in 1931, writes that fleabane travelled from the New World to Europe in the seventeenth century and caught on there. As early as 1653, it was reportedly growing in the Botanical Garden of Paris and was first noticed in London in 1669. Like many wild plants, fleabane was used for medicinal purposes. Dried plant parts and seeds were compounded into tonics and remedies for dropsy, kidney problems, throat inflammation and gastric ailments.
According to Mrs. Grieve, the seventeenth century herbalist Nicholas Culpepper called the plant “flea wort” and claimed the name came from the fact that the tiny seeds looked like common fleas. However, the word “bane” in any plant name, generally meant that the plant was used to kill or ward off a particular species. An extract of “wolfsbane” or aconitum, for example, was reputedly useful in killing wolves. When I was young I was told that fleabane was traditionally compounded into a solution used as a flea dip for animals and humans. This seems to put the name into a more appropriate context. It is also possible that herbalists applied the ancient “doctrine of signatures” to fleabane, concluding that if the seeds looked like fleas, the plant would therefore be useful as a flea dip. Whatever the efficacy of fleabane as a flea dip, the fleas probably fled the bathwater.
I decided to leave the “wild” fleabane in my garden alone and plant the coneflowers in another spot. I will probably regret this as fleabane tends to self-seed with wild abandon. However, they are also easy to pull out, should the need arise.
For those who want something a little more refined, try one of the domesticated fleabanes. One perennial species, Erigeron speciosus, sometimes goes by the common name “dainty daisy”. ‘Pink Jewel’ is a speciosus cultivar that grows about 20 inches tall and has pinky-purple flowers. The hybrid erigeron, ‘Prosperity’, blooms in summer and sports blue-purple, aster-like flowers.
If you like the sounds of Erigeron philadelphicus, leave a corner of your garden untended. You will probably have one–or two or ten–next spring. For the two cultivated varieties mentioned above, try ForestFarm, 990 Tetherow Road, Williams, OR 97544; (541) 846-7269; www.forestfarm.com. Catalog $5.00.