Chocolate Flower Berlandiera lyrata

Greetings,  This Is a lovely picture that I captured over the summer of a Chocolate flower, Given its name because of its Delightful chocolate aroma it puts off when it blooms in the early morning hours. Click on The Photo to Go to my Website and see this and other photos available for download for Stock photography for only $0.99.

 

A.K.A. chocolate daisy, Lyreleaf Greeneyes, Berlandiera lyrata

A quarter-size, vibrant, yellow daisy with striking red striped undersides and chocolate-colored stamens.

A small plant with an airy habit, Chocolate Scented Daisy  (sometimes called Chocolate Flower) makes a nice, informal edging plant, and is most impressive and most fragrant when planted in groups.

 Although native to the Southwest, Chocolate Scented Daisy has shown itself to be adaptable to a wide spectrum of conditions.  A night bloomer, the flowers offer up their rich cocoa scent in the morning. As the temperature rises the petals close or drop and the fragrance recedes.

The calyxes flatten outward and make a convenient holder on which the large milk chocolate colored seeds will ripen. Left alone to drop or be carried, these seeds come up readily the next spring.

 If harvested before the seeds come loose at the center (note the cream colored attachment points around the middle), these make an attractive addition to the autumn dried arrangement.

The fragrant stamens do taste like cocoa, or more accurately like unsweetened chocolate. But, they are much more enjoyable adding their delicious fragrance to the garden.

Berlandiera dies back to the ground in winter and returns with a larger crown each spring, ultimately reaching about two feet across and about 18 inches high.

It Flowers nearly year round, and is very drought resistant making a perfect plant for Landscaping in the Desert Southwest.

It grows in Dry arid regions, sandy loams, rocky, limestone soils, roadsides, grasslands with mesquite, oak, and juniper; 700–2200. Found in Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas and of course the Deserts of Mexico.

Berlandiera lyrata is cultivated in Arizona. Exceptional specimens that are scapiform (sometimes monocephalic) with mostly undivided leaves and with wartlike hairs on peduncles occur at higher elevations (south-central New Mexico, trans-Pecos Texas, and Nuevo León). They have yellow disc corollas, as do most collections from Chihuahua, Durango, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas.

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 Scientific Specifics:

Plants 10–60(–120) cm. Stems (erect to decumbent) usually branched. Leaves evenly distributed along stems; petiolate; blades oblanceolate or obovate to spatulate, often lyrate, sometimes ± pinnatifid (terminal lobes usually shorter than pinnatifid portions, crenate to irregularly incised), membranous to slightly chartaceous, ultimate margins crenate or entire, faces ± velvety. Heads in corymbiform arrays. Peduncles hairy (some hairs reddish, bulbous-based, wartlike, surpassing white, appressed hairs). Involucres 13–17 mm diam. Ray corollas deep yellow to orange-yellow, abaxial veins (sometimes whole surfaces) red to maroon, laminae 10–14 × 5.5–8 mm. Disc corollas red to maroon (rarely yellow). Cypselae 4.5–6 × 2.7–3.7 mm. 2n = 30.
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