This is not a Cut-leafed Daisy

Back in August when I took yet another photograph of the clearly photogenic Red Sand Garden leading into the Australian Garden at Cranbourne Gardens, I noticed a lovely mauve-flowering daisy in the corner. Ah, a lovely brachyscome, or Cut-leafed Daisy, I thought. It was one of the new plantings in the Ephemeral Garden, flanking the main red-sand area.

Then I thought, well it's actually a bigger than I'd expect from that stalwart of Australian home gardening. And the flowers aren't quite right. So I went to take a closer look, and check the plant label.

It's Olearia homolepis, from south-western Western Australia, where it has white- or blue-flowered forms. I saw the same plant a few months later in Maranoa Botanic Gardens, in Balwyn. Also helpfully labelled.

This plant can be easily confused with Brachyscome multifida at a distance. In fact about the time I was taking these pictures, back in August, someone responded to a photograph posted by the Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria on Instagram, asking for the name of this very plant. Our quick and helpful response was Brachyscome multifida 'Mauve'. Not quite right of course and there was some gentle questioning from a few followers until I (and a couple of others) set the world to rights.

Olearia species, of which there are about 180 (all in Australia, New Guinea and New Zealand), tend to be bigger than this ground-hugging shrublet. This particular one does have a connection to Victoria, and our Botanic Gardens. Our first Director, Ferdinand von Mueller, described the species from a collection made by Augustus Oldfield near Murchison River in Western Australia. Mueller included it in the genus Aster, then a very large genus of mostly Northern Hemisphere species. after which the whole daisy family, Asteraceae, was named.

I always think of Olearia species as having 'ratty' flowerheads. I'm not sure if that's the technical term but the those outer mauve parts (the ligules or petals of the ray florets) are always a bit disheveled in the species I know. Perhaps they are trying to fit too many of those petals into a small flowerhead. A unintended consequence of evolution perhaps? Or maybe this kind of bohemian flower is attractive to your more unconventional insect? 

Anyway, unlike many other daisies, such as our Brachyscome, which has far neater flowers. My colleague Neville Walsh may correct me on this rather sweeping observation but it held true in this case - I couldn't find a nice neat flower to photograph.

I note too that Bunnings were selling this species under the name Pretty Pops in the weeks leading up to Father's Day. I'm not sure if that was an opportunistic name at the time, or coincidence. In any case I didn't get any pots of it, or other plants, for Father's Day.

Which is perfectly fine. We have plenty of Brachyscome multifida in our front garden, and I wouldn't want to detract from its more subdued but widely appreciated beauty. Here instead are a couple more photos of Olearia homolepis from Maranoa Botanic Gardens (the top three in this post are from Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, Cranbourne Gardens).