Gaillardia
– Blanket Flower.
The plant has perennial, hardy and half hardy
annual forms.
Three feet.
Flowers in selfs and mixtures of red and yellow.
July to October.
There is some confusion amongst seeds men and
growers as to the status of some varieties, and
this is increased by the somewhat uncertain habits
of the admittedly perennial kinds, which have
a trick of dying out unexpectedly from their allotted
quarters, and of obstinately reappearing in ground
from which they have been carefully removed.
The Gaillardia is rather a weak-backed subject,
with a leaning to the recumbent posture; the leaves
are light green and woolly, the flowers, in the
single forms, are two or three inches in diameter,
flat and daisy-shaped, with a central seed-boss;
there are doubles, and forms with quilled petals
like chrysanthemums.
The colours are crimson and yellow, usually in
concentric bands of colour.
The “perennial” kinds are not strictly
hardy, and are easily lost. Roots may be planted
out in March, in well-dug soil manured with old
hot-bed stuff, leaf-mould, etc., or seed may be
sown on a hot-bed early in March, and the seedlings
brought on with the half-hardy annuals, and planted
out in May or early June.
There is a bewildering choice of named sorts,
for which the tradesmen’s catalogues must
be consulted.
These are the more recently produced strain of
hybrids, the older breeds are Gaillardia picta
Lorenziana, Gaillardia p. Josephus, etc.; as to
the classification of which as annuals or perennials
the catalogues differ.
The unmistakable annual is Gaillardia amblyodon,
with scarlet flowers.
See Also : Blanket
Flower
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