WILDFLOWERS

I thought it appropriate to introduce this tiny Wild member of the Sunflower family, Asteraceae while you are getting familiar with the larger and more cultivated Dahlias ( do check out my blog SAY IT WITH FLOWERS) and Gazanias ( do read a recent blog titled TREASURE too) .

The Mountain daisy ( English) ,Daisy Fleabane or Hairy Fleabane ,Erigeron bellidioides ( Scientific Name)  is a Wildflower that grows freely forming a carpet like undergrowth as it mixes with grass in the Himalayas.

These flowers were once  considered to repel fleas and hence called FLEABANE.

Chaotic Order

These lovely  Wildflowers scramble up rocky mountains and peer out from every crevice available.

While individually they are very small, they make up by flowering in abundance.

Unlike their cousins from Mexico ( the Dahlias)  and South Africa ( the Gazanias) these tiny Mountain Daisies are native to the   Himalyan Mountains of the Indian Subcontinent.

A few scramble up the moss laden rocky mountains

These white daisies will all turn pink ( like the wall behind them) as they grow older.

This characteristic of turning white at an early stage of its life cycle  give them the Generic name  Erigeron, which in Greek means early old man.

Here you can clearly identify their distinctive lance like leaves as well.

Looking  down from the ledge

These flowers looked liked daisies and I photographed them in the Himalayas at Mussoorie, so I assumed they  are Himalayan Daisies, which however turned up looking almost like Sunflowers and did not match the photographs I had taken at all.

Learnt a lesson this New Year, never assume anything.

The featured image highlights this aspect, please see carefully, the flower in the foreground is a Mountain Daisy but not the buds and leaves in the background.

To top it all he Mountain daisy is a faux daisy, not a real daisy.

These little ones surely turned me wild as I spent a longtime figuring out their botanical name.