Please Don't Eat The (Mutant) Daisies--Cross-Eyed SusansSurprise Seasoned Gardener
Please Donât Eat The (Mutant) Daisiesââ
Cross-Eyed Susans
Surprise Seasoned Gardener
By Dottie Evans
Helen Kriger has been tending flowers in her Boggs Hill Road garden since 1969, but she has never seen anything like this.
âI was picking some black-eyed Susans that I had transplanted into a corner garden full of annuals, and look what I found!â said Mrs Kriger on Monday morning, as she stopped by The Bee office.
âWhat do you think?â she asked, pointing to a glass jar filled with daisylike yellow flowers immersed up to their necks in fresh water.
At first, they looked perfectly normal, bright and cheery.
Upon second glance, they did not look so normal after all.
For some unknown reason, nature had gone slightly haywire. To put it bluntly, Mrs Krigerâs black-eyed Susans were deformed, and anybody intending to find out if âHe Loves Me,â or if âHe Loves Me Notâ was going to be a long time ripping off petals.
Each single stem bore two entire flower heads, and the stems themselves were thick and over-sized, as though fused.
Some of the center pods, which are normally a bristly black and rounded, were strangely oblong and bulbous. One pod had actually split into two completely separate halves.
âI knew the garden clubs would be interested,â said Mrs Kriger, who is a lifetime member of the Town and Country Garden Club and an honorary member of the Horticulture Club of Newtown.
She said she had transplanted these perennials several years ago from âan entire hillside of at least 50â that were growing rampant on her property, and she had tucked them into an annual garden that she fertilizes regularly.
âTheyâve been spreading like wildfire. I was going to bring these over to Louise at My Place Restaurant because she likes fresh flowers for her tables, but I thought Iâd bring them here first,â Mrs Kriger said.
After some discussion, it was decided that they were mutations because, every now and then, Nature throws a curve ball. Two-headed daisies were no more sinister than four-leafed clovers ââ and maybe they were even luckier.