Oxeye Daisy

Where it grows

Oxeye daisy is native across Europe and temperate Asia and has naturalised in North America, Australia, and New Zealand to the point of being listed as a noxious weed in some states. It favours rough pasture, road verges, rail embankments, and any neglected sunny grassland on poor soils.

How to recognise it

Each plant grows thirty to ninety centimetres tall, with narrow, deeply lobed dark green leaves and single composite flowers up to five centimetres across at the tip of each unbranched stem. The fifteen to thirty white ray florets surround a flat yellow disc, the whole giving the impression of a large garden daisy.

Garden & cultural uses

Oxeye is the backbone species of wildflower meadow seed mixes sown across British conservation areas. Its larger relative, the Shasta daisy (Leucanthemum × superbum), is the garden form bred by Luther Burbank in California in the 1890s by hybridising oxeye with three other species.

In folklore

In Christian Europe the oxeye became Mary’s flower and was carried in midsummer garlands, while older European traditions linked it to the thunder gods Thor and Donar.