Can there be a more familiar flower than the humble daisy, so often seen yet so often taken for granted.
–––
The familiar name of the Daisy is derived from a contraction of the medieval ‘Dayes Eye,’ as the flower opens during the day and closes at night.
Chaucer referred to it as the “eye of the day.”
This is another example of the way we used to see and interact with nature, of how we knew about the essence of those organisms with which we share our space.
The flower in the photograph is the showier cousin of the familiar English daisy. This is the annual daisy, its magnificence is only permitted to shine for one brief season and at the moment, it is growing in abundance on the hillside above Facinas.
The English daisy by contrast, in its typically British understated way, returns year after year, quietly and politely decorating our suburban lawns.
Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own.