Southern Doll’s Daisy Is a Little-Known Native Gem

When my budding interests in horticulture started developing in junior high school, I came across Hortus Third, an encyclopedic tome of horticulture compiled in the 1970s. Learning about plants from my dad while working on landscape installations, and then looking them up in Hortus Third after hours, I developed a sense of wonder about plant diversity both in the natural world and in cultivation in our gardens and landscapes. How could a genus described in Hortus Third such as Michelia (later reclassified as Magnolia) have “about 50 species of evergreen trees and shrubs” but only eight listed? What about the other 42 species? Were they unworthy of cultivation, or had we simply not tried the other ones yet? With many genera, the latter often proves to be the case. It turns out that the world of horticulture often overlooks many worthy plants.

A perfect example of this phenomenon is smallhead doll’s daisy (Boltonia diffusa, Zones 5–9). There are seven recognized species of Boltonia, six being native to the United States and the seventh one from eastern Asia. All are herbaceous perennials known for their profusion of mostly white daisylike flowers. For the longest time only white doll’s daisy, or false aster (Boltonia asteroides, Zones 3–10), was known and grown. In southern U.S. gardens, white doll’s daisy flops over and makes a less than pleasing garden subject, despite being native from southern Canada southward to the Gulf Coast. In 2015, landscape architect Tres Fromme from Sanford, Florida, brought another species to my attention, one that was not mentioned in Hortus Third. Smallhead doll’s daisy is native to the southeastern and south-central United States. Tres used this plant in designs at Atlanta Botanical Garden,