Gaillardia named Arizona Sun #5
by J McCombie
Title
Gaillardia named Arizona Sun #5
Artist
J McCombie
Medium
Photograph - Untouched
Description
This piece has been featured in the FAA Groups: "For the Love of Flowers", and "Flowers flora blossoms".
Gaillardia Arizona Sun is a 2005 All America Selections winner because of its outstanding hardiness, everblooming flowers, and drought tolerance.
Reminiscent of the desert sun in Arizona, Gaillardia x grandiflora "Arizona Sun" produces 3 inch wide (7 cm), single flowers with mahogany red rays adorned with a golden-yellow ring at their tips. This short-lived perennial is renouned for its profuse, long-lasting, colourful mounds of bright flowers atop an attractive gray-green foliage from early summer to fall. Rich of nectar, the flowers are real magnets for butterflies.
There are about 23 species of gaillardia scattered across the Americas. Most are perennials native to North America, with the heaviest concentration in the southwestern United States. But the genus includes a few annuals and biennials, and a handful of species native to South America. Closely related to the Heleniums, all are in the sunflower (Asteraceae) family. Most are called blanket flowers. Legend has it that a native American weaver was so good at her craft that when she died, her grave was blanketed with flowers colored as brilliantly as the blankets she had made.
The first botanist to describe gaillardia was Auguste Dennis Fougeroux de Bondaroy, who worked from specimens of a lovely, knee-high annual wildflower collected in Louisiana. In 1788, he named it Gaillardia pulchella after French naturalist Antoine Rene Gaillard de Charentoneau; pulchella is Latin for “pretty.” Its 2-inch, red flowers typically have yellow tips on their ray flowers, and a much darker-red central disc.
Gaillardias are composites, with each daisy comprising lots of smaller flowers. Those smaller blooms are of two types: tiny disc flowers (florets) that cover the central disc, and sterile ray flowers that make a kind of halo around the central disc. The rays come in two forms: most often they look like long, slim, flat petals, but they can also take the form of trumpets. The flower head itself can have the look of a single or a double flower, depending upon its structure. Those with a single look have classic daisy form, like a child’s drawing of a sunflower. In the doubles, the central disc is crowded with trumpet-shaped, five-petaled flowers. Most gaillardias with ray flowers have a colorful banded look. Sometimes the rays’ three-toothed tips are some shade of yellow, while the rest of each ray is red, orange, or maroon. In other varieties, the yellow might go nearly to the ray’s base. And in still other varieties, the whole flower head can be yellow, orange, or red, with no banding. The ray’s base and the outer edge of the disc are usually the same color, though the center of the disc is much lighter—even green or yellow—when the flower first opens. Because each flower head grows on its own stem and lasts long, all gaillardia make great cut flowers. Gaillardia’s big, soft leaves are generally hairy, strap shaped, and smooth edged, though they can be toothed or lobed. It’s common to find all leaf types on the same plant. Leaves can be clasping, stemless, or have only short stems, and all plant parts have a light floral fragrance. Flowers pop out just above the leaf mass.
The carefree Southwestern US and Mexican natives thrive in full sun are unfazed by the heat, humidity and drought. They are also salt tolerant and an attractive low maintenance choice for seaside plantings. Indian blanket blooms profusely even in light sands along seashore. Many states are sowing the shoulders along freeways and highways with blanket flowers, providing spectacular displays of color during the spring and early summer. LifeCycle: Annual or short-lived Perennial, Uses: Beds, Container, Thriller, Sun: Full Sun, Height: 10-14 inches, Spread: 10-12 inches, Bloom Duration: 10 weeks, Zones: 3-10.
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October 4th, 2021
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