This is one of many pages describing plants and animal life
that we have in our garden. In many cases, we don't know what they are. Comments welcome.
By default the photos on this page are relatively small (“thumbnails“). Click
on them to get progressively larger photos.
These flowers are Gazanias.
They're particularly hardy plants.
“Hardy” means “capable of handling whatever the weather brings”. In
Europe it tends to mean that the plant can tolerate heavy frost. Here in Australia it means
that the plant can tolerate heavy drought.
I found it by chance in a bed that I hadn't ever watered. Peter Jeremy tells me that it's a
Gazania, which seems reasonable, and
Leonne confirms, adding that they self-seed.
Leonne says that the gazanias self-seed. I haven't seen that, but they are very easy to
propagate by cuttings: just cut off a stem and stick it into the ground. They don't even seem
to need watering. On 12 March 2008 I planted some gazanias (including
the one above) in a new bed, and they grew like fury. Unfortunately, the kangaroos took a liking to them, so we decided to divide them and let
them conquer. We now have about 8 plants, including the one with these flowers on it:
