Gerbera jamesonii Seeds | Barberton Daisy
LATIN NAME: Gerbera jamesonii
COMMON NAME: Barberton Daisy
Plant Profile
The parent of one of the world’s most traded cut flowers is a modest, orange-scarlet daisy from stony grassland in the hills above Barberton, a mining town in the eastern Transvaal that was thrown up by a gold rush in the 1880s. Robert Jameson sent plant material back to Europe, Harry Bolus described it, and the species was figured in a botanical magazine before long. Within a few generations it had left the hills for the auction halls of Europe, and the modern florist’s gerbera, with its absurd range of colours, is a hybrid descended from it.
Like every member of the family, the flower is a composite head rather than a single bloom. The outer ring consists of ray florets, each one a strap-shaped structure that is in fact a bilabiate flower with one lip drawn out long and the other reduced to a small tag, a signature of the mutisioid group to which the genus belongs. The centre is packed with disc florets, which carry the stamens and the pollen. The head is held on a long, leafless scape that keeps elongating after the flower has opened, which is why a gerbera cut for the vase continues to grow away from the water line and why the stems need a fresh cut. Heads close in dull, wet weather, which is one reason the crop is grown under cover in most producing regions.
The species carries fifty chromosomes, and crossing it with its close relative Gerbera viridifolia produced the cultivated gerbera of the trade, an F1 hybrid line in which the large, uniform head of G. jamesonii is combined with colours the wild plant never had. The chromosomes are large and easy to count, so cytology has long been used to check the parentage of new lines.
Colour in gerbera has two separate chemical origins. The orange-scarlet of the wild species comes from carotenoid pigments laid down in the ray florets. The pinks, reds and purples of modern cultivars depend instead on anthocyanins, and the cream and near-white lines carry very little of either. Breeders work on both pathways at once, which is why a bench of modern gerbera carries a colour range that no single pigment system could produce.
Science & Biotechnology
A cultivar gerbera is an F1 hybrid, so seed from it would produce a muddle of different plants. Commercial stock is therefore multiplied in the laboratory, from shoot tips and crown buds that are induced to branch and then rooted, giving thousands of identical plants from one selected seedling. The same plant has earned a second scientific career as a model for flower development in the daisy family, because its head carries two distinct kinds of floret and its genes can be studied for the way a capitulum is built. Molecular work on the genus has traced the switches that decide whether a floret becomes a ray or a disc.
Uses & Benefits
Gerbera is sold as a single stem, graded by head size and stem length, and it is among the most traded cut flowers at the Dutch auctions. The scape is cut in the cool of the morning, stood in clean water and moved straight into the cold chain, because the head is easily bruised. Large-flowered types and the small-flowered mini gerbera sold under the Germini name are handled as separate crops. In the garden the plant is grown as a half-hardy bedding and container subject, and there it earns its keep from mid-summer to the first frost.
Growing from Seed
The seed sold by the trade is a small achene with its pappus removed. Sow it on the surface of a fine, moist seed compost, press it in lightly and do not bury it, because it needs light; a dusting of vermiculite is enough cover. A mix of one part sieved peat-free compost and one part fine perlite, firmed and watered from below, suits it well. Keep the pan warm and humid under glass until the seedlings lift, then move them into the light so that they do not stretch, and prick them out when the first true leaf has opened. Space garden plants thirty centimetres apart when the rosette carries three or four true leaves.
The most common failure in cultivation is a buried crown. Set the plant so that the growing point sits at or just above the surface, and water the soil around it rather than over the leaves. In warm, wet conditions the crown can rot, and a plant that collapses at the base should be lifted and discarded rather than watered. Thrips are the serious pest, both because they scar the ray florets and because they carry the virus that causes ring spots on the leaves and flowers, so control them early with sticky traps. Whitefly, leaf miner, aphid and red spider mite all follow gerbera into a greenhouse.
Cut the spent scapes by gripping the stem near the crown and pulling with a twist, which removes the whole stalk and leaves no rotting stub. Feed with a low-nitrogen, high-potassium liquid feed through the flowering season, because too much nitrogen gives you leaves instead of flowers. Plants are frost-tender, so lift them before the first frost, trim the leaves back to the crown, and store the crowns in barely damp compost in a cool, frost-free place, or treat the crop as an annual and sow again in the new year.
Our Take
Barberton daisy seed is cheap, quick to grow and gives you a whole bench of garden colour for a single season, and the flowers hold well in a vase. If you like the composite look, try the ox-eye daisy for a hardy white counterpart in the border, or Zinnia elegans for a long-stemmed cutting crop beside it. For a bolder, tuberous plant in the same family, the garden dahlia is worth a row of its own.
Related Reading
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