Fields of Poached Egg Daisies

It’s now late December and the Poached Egg Daisies (Polycalymma stuartii) really have finished for the year. There’s white fluff everywhere from the dispersing seed. I call it, a bit optimistically, “snow in summer”; Phil calls it “a bloody mess”.

Fields of daisies colonise bare sand

The flowers really are like a poached egg with a yellow centre and white outer.

A feral Honeybee

First published December 30th 2020

The “white fluff” stage of spent Poached Egg Daisy

Poached Egg Daisies are very common in the Mallee, especially on deep sands. They are “early colonisers” and are most abundant where the soil has been bared off by overgrazing or drought. For us, two years of very low rainfall and then this year’s good Winter/Spring rainfall resulted in fields of daisies.

But sometimes there are double, or triple, yolkers …

Caper White Butterfly