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Chrysanthemum leucanthemum--Oxeye Daisy
Aster Family
About Oxeye Daisy: Worldwide there are about 200 species of daisy. The oxeye daisy (Chrysanthemum leucanthemum) is a beautiful flower, one that is both loved and hated. It was a plague on pastures and crop fields across Europe. The Scots called the flowers "gools". The farmer with the most gools in their wheat field had to pay an extra tax. Now the gools have invaded this continent from coast to coast.
The oxeye daisy is short-lived perennial originally brought here from Europe. The dainty flowers have escaped cultivation and now crowd out other plants on many rangelands. A vigorous daisy can produce 26,000 seeds per plant, while smaller specimens produce 1,300 to 4,000 seeds per plant. Tests have shown that 82% of the buried seeds remained viable after six years, and 1% were still viable after 39 years. Oxeye daisy requires cold winters to initiate blooming. The plant also reproduces vegetatively with spreading rootstalks. Daisies are resistant to many herbicides.
Medicinal: The oxeye daisy is mildly aromatic, like its close cousin, chamomile. The leaves and flowers are edible, though palatability may vary. A tea of the plant is useful for relaxing the bronchials. It is diuretic and astringent, useful for stomach ulcers and bloody piles or urine. Also used as a vaginal douche for cervical ulceration. The daisy is aromatic, used as an antispasmodic for colic and general digestive upset.
Grazing: Sheep, goats and horses eat the oxeye daisy, but cows and pigs do not like it. The plant spreads rapidly when cattle pastures are managed with a low stock density and continuous grazing regime. Under these conditions, cows repeatedly select their preferred plants, while ignoring unpalatable species like the oxeye daisy.
Switching to higher stock densities and shorter grazing periods does encourage cattle to eat and trample more of the plant. Intensive grazing and trampling slightly reduces the number of seeds produced, and presumably injures younger rootstalks. Trampling also brings dormant seeds to the surface and removes the canopy cover so those seeds will germinate with mid-summer rain showers. In normal years, those seedlings will dry-out and die before becoming established, further reducing the number of seeds in the seed bank. It should be noted, however, that intensive grazing in wet summers may increase the number of successful seedlings. As many as 40% percent of the seeds consumed by cattle may remain viable after passing through the digestive tract, so care should be taken to avoid spreading the seeds when moving stock.
Chemical: Oxeye daisy is somewhat resistant to MCPA, 2,4-D and dicamba (Banvel¨), but the herbicides are effective in higher concentrations. Picloram (Tordon¨ 22K) and sulfometuron methyl (Oust¨) can also be used on daisies.
Important: Most "weed problems" are really "people problems" from poor land management and a lack of ecological insight. It is easy to reach for a tool like fire, mowing, or herbicides to attack an out-of-control weed, but often those tools do little to get to the root cause of the weed infestation, and sometimes make the problems worse. You must read the range ecology sections of this website before applying any tool of weed control. Return to the Wildflowers & Weeds Home Page for articles on Desertification and Noxious Weeds.
Notes
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