I was driving in this morning, admiring all the daisies that have sprouted along the highway. Of course, with daisies, the first thing to pop into my head was the old “loves me and loves me not thing.” Or, as it is officially called, the daisy oracle.
The first thing I discovered was that the daisy ain’t from here. Like many plants we might consider native wildflowers, it came from somewhere else. Which made me start looking into other plants, particularly the ones that grow along the edges of the highways. Surprisingly, many of them are invasive species. Dandelions, white and red clover and daisies are all European and Asian natives. Lupins are at least from North American, but are more of a western plant. But without invasive plants, we wouldn’t have much growing along the edge of our roads.
But back to the daisy. Where did that whole “loves me, loves me not” thing come from? No one seems really sure. The first written account comes from a 1471 songbook published in Germany. The French have a long tradition of ripping the petals off daisies, or “effeuiller la marguerite”, or plucking the daisy. Only they do it different. No simply yes or no in the old French version. It runs through all the feelings. The plucker can be loved a little, a lot, passionately, to madness or not at all. Much more of a challenge. Not just in the plucking, but remembering where you are in the order.
There are other literary references to plucking daisy. There is even a world record for daisy plucking. That was set by a TV show in Italy in 2009.
So there is a long history of people destroying daisy flowers to find out about love.
And there really is no way to tell in advance. The oxeye daisy, which is the most common wild version, has anywhere from fifteen to forty petals. Sure, you could count the petals, but that kind of takes the fun out of the process.
And we won’t get to the second part. The number of children. No way that’s ever going to be right.