Gerbera

Where it grows

The wild Gerbera jamesonii grows in summer-rainfall grasslands of the Mpumalanga and Transvaal provinces of South Africa. Robert Jameson collected it for European horticulture in 1884; intensive breeding in the Netherlands and Italy produced the modern cut-flower hybrids, now grown commercially in greenhouses from Kenya to Colombia.

How to recognise it

A flat rosette of long, deeply lobed leaves sits at soil level, sending up slender hairy stems forty to sixty centimetres tall. Each stem ends in a single composite flower up to twelve centimetres across, with one or more rows of broad satin-textured ray florets in pure, unmuddled colours surrounding a contrasting disc.

Garden & cultural uses

In cool climates gerbera is grown as a tender perennial or treated as an annual; in mild Mediterranean and subtropical gardens it flowers from spring to first frost. NASA’s 1989 clean-air study found that gerbera daisies absorbed measurable amounts of benzene and trichloroethylene from indoor air, fueling decades of houseplant marketing.

In symbolism

In the Victorian language of flowers the gerbera represented cheerfulness, a meaning the colour wheel of cut-flower mass markets has preserved untouched.