Blanket Flower

Blanket flower, also referred to by its scientific name, Gaillardia, is a genus of the family Asteraceae. Blanket flowers are long and yellow flowers, native to North American plains.

Kingdom

Plantae

Division

Magnoliophyta

Class

Magnoliopsida

Order

Asterales

Family

Asteraceae

Genus

Gaillardia

Blanket flowers are Daisy-like flowers in shades of yellow, bronze and scarlet with a purplish base, often used as cut flowers. Flower heads are solitary or few, on long peduncles. Flowers are wide, purple or brownish-purple; involucral bracts pointed, loosely hairy; rays usually 13, 1-3.5 cm. Flowers are long; having disk corollas with dense woolly hairs toward the tip, which tend to obscure to pointed lobes. Flower receptacle is covered with chaffy bristles that are longer than the achenes.

Facts About Blanket Flower

• Blanket flower was named after M.Gaillard de Charentonneau, an 18th-century French magistrate.
• Blanket flower plants form wiry, branched stems.
• Leaves of blanket flower are lanceolate to linear basal leaves, and entire to coarsely toothed.
• Blanket flower plant grows to 1-1/2 to 2 ft tall, with bright daisy-like single flowers.
• Single color and bi-color blooms are present from buff to red to brown.
• Blanket flowers bloom in summer.
• There are more than twenty known species of Gaillardia.
• Blanket flowers are drought-tolerant.

Growing Blanket Flower

• Blanket flowers flourish well in soils with two-thirds loam and one-third leaf mold and sand.
• Provide enough space between the seeds while sowing so that you can use a cultivator to control weeds. To obtain spaced rows, cover the drop tube holes in the seed drill hopper that are necessary to obtain the desired row spacing.
• Take care that the seeds are placed not more than 1 cm. deep. Infact, they should be sown at 0.5 cm. from the surface of the soil. Seeds buried more tha 1 cm. deep will not result in seedlings.

Caring for Gaillardia

• Do not totally cover the seeds while sowing.
• Water the seedlings regularly.
• A stake should be provided to support the taller varieties.
• Keep the flower stalks cut off as they fade so that the flowers bloom from mid June, until the first frost.