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The golden marguerite shows its pretty yellow flowers from June to September. Here is how to properly plant and care for Anthemis tinctoria.
Profile of golden marguerite:
Scientific name: Anthemis tinctoria / Cota tinctoria
Plant family: aster or daisy family (Asteraceae)
Other names: yellow chamomile, oxeye chamomile, dyer’s chamomile, Boston daisy, Paris daisy
Sowing time: April or May
Planting time: Spring
Flowering period: June to September
Location: sunny
Soil quality: stony to loamy, calcipholous, moderately nutritious, low in humus
These information are for temperate climate!
Use in: flower beds, bouquets, planters, borders, cottage garden, flower garden, natural garden, rock garden, potted garden
Wintner hardiness: hardy, USDA Plant Hardiness Zones: 6
Bee and insect friendly: Yes
Plant characteristics and classification of golden marguerite
Plant order, origin and occurrence of golden marguerite
The golden marguerite (Anthemis tinctoria), also called yellow chamomile, is a species of field camomile (Anthemis) from the daisy family (Asteraceae). In addition to the camomile, there are the stinking chamomile (Anthemis cotula), the field camomile (Anthemis arvensis) and the Ruthenian camomile (Anthemis ruthenica). The golden marguerite grows in nature on dry grass, embankments and along roadsides. It likes nitrogenous, loose sand or clay soils or shallow stone floors. Although it is not a long-lived perennial, it seed itself in a suitable location and thus cares for new plants.
Characteristics of golden marguerite
Plant
The golden marguerite is a perennial herbaceous plant that reaches a height of 30 to 60 centimeters (12 to 24 in). Their thin and branched stems are often woolly-felty in the upper half.
Leaves
The alternate leaves of Anthemis tinctoria have four to six larger, comb-shaped, feathered side sections. They are green on the top, almost bald and scattered dotted, on the underside more or less gray-felted.
Blossoms
From June to September the mostly golden-yellow cup-like flowers appear, which have hemispherical heads. The individual heads are about two to three centimeters (0.8 to 1.2 in) wide and have a wreath with tongue flowers that are about one centimeter (0.4 in) long and, depending on the variety, can also be light yellow to whitish in color. In the past, the yellow dye of the chamomile flowers was used to dye wool and fabrics.
Fruit
After flowering, the chamomile forms seeds without pappus.
Golden marguerite – cultivation and care
Location
Anthemis tinctoria likes to grow in full sun in a warm location.
Soil
The undemanding golden marguerite gets along well on barren, sandy and well-drained soils. If the soil is too wet or too rich in nutrients, the plsnt forms more leaves than flowers.
Planting / Sowing
The golden marguerite can be grown easily from seeds. To do this, they are sown directly at the desired location in April or May. Since Anthemis tinctoria is very popular with butterflies, bumblebees, bees and hoverflies, the seeds are found in many bee seed mixtures.
Care / Watering / Fertilization / Pruning
The frugal golden marguerite usually does not need to be watered or fertilized. A location without potential waterlogging is important, otherwise it will not survive cold and wet winters. If you remove faded flowers continuously, new flowers appear for months. In September, the plant should be pruned to about ten centimeters (4 in) to stimulate the formation of new, strong shoots.
Propagation
The plant can easily be propagated by sowing, division and cuttings. After pruning in late summer or autumn, you can also divide the plant and replant in another place in the garden.
Diseases and pests
The golden marguerite is a robust garden plant that is hardly affected by diseases and is also spared by snails.
Wintering
Golden marguerite is hardy down to -20,5 °C / -5 °F.
Use in the garden
The golden marguerite is well suited for near-natural rock gardens and gravel beds. Compact growing varieties are long-lasting flowers for the balcony box, such as Anthemis tinctoria ’Dwarf Form’. The inflorescences of the golden marguerite are also very long-lasting as cut flowers. The flowers also provide nectar and pollen for honeybees and are also popular with many other insects.
Varieties
In addition to the yellow flowering origin, there are also varieties with creamy white, pale yellow or two-tone flowers. The variety ‘Susanna Mitchell‘ with pale yellow flowers and gray-green foliage is particularly attractive. There are other varieties:
’E.C. Buxton’, for example, is a lemon-yellow variety that grows to around 60 centimeters high. The variety ‘Kelwayi‘ has lemon-yellow flowers, is fine-leaved and can be seed-propagated. Anthemis tinctoria ‘Grallagh Gold’ forms golden flowers and grows to a height of about 70 centimeters (28 in). ‘Wargrave’ is a vigorous variety with cream-yellow flowers. ‘Ala Dagh’ has dark yellow flowers about three centimeters (1.2 in) in size, the ligulate flowers of which are greatly shortened. This variety is only 40 centimeters (16 in) high and was created from a cultivation of wild seeds from Turkey.
Use for dyeing
The color for dyeing is obtained as follows: Put the flowers in water and let them stand for a few hours. Then the liquid with the flowers is boiled and allowed to simmer for an hour. Let it stand for another 12 hours, then sieve. Next add the wool to be dyed and heat the liquid to a maximum of 70 °C / 158 °F. It can take an hour for the wool to absorb the color. Then rinse with water and fix with vinegar.
Half a kilo (1 lbs) of dried flowers is enough to dye half a kilo of wool. However, the wool must first be stained with 100 g of alum, which is placed in a bucket of boiling water. Let stand for 1 hour.
If you want to dye eggs with the yellow color, you can add 15 – 25 g in 1 liter of water and simmer for a quarter of an hour. Then the raw eggs are added. After 10 minutes the eggs are hard and yellow.
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