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White Daisy. White-Weed. Ox-Eyed Daisy

Chrysanthemum Leucanthemum. Composite Family.

The common white daisy stars the June meadows with those gold-centred blossoms which delight the eyes of the beauty-lover while they make sore the heart of the farmer, for the "white-weed," as he calls it, is hurtful to pasture land and difficult to eradicate.

The true daisy is the Bellis perennis of England,--the "Wee, modest, crimson-tippit flower" of Burns. This was first called "day's eye," because it closed at night and opened at dawn,-- "That well by reason men it call may, The Daisie, or else the eye of the day," sang Chaucer nearly five hundred years ago. In England our flower is called "ox-eye" and "moon daisy;" in Scotland, "dog-daisy." The plant is not native to this country, but was brought from the Old World by the early colonists.