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Tuesday, 15 April 2025

20-3-2025 WATER GARDENS SIGIRIYA, SRI LANKA - TRAILING DAISY (Sphagneticola trilobata)


Sphagneticola trilobata, commonly known as the Bay Biscayne creeping-oxeye, marigold Singapore daisy, creeping-oxeye, trailing daisy, and wedelia, is a plant in the tribe Heliantheae of the family Asteraceae. It is native to Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, but now grows throughout the Neotropics. It is widely cultivated as an ornamental groundcover.

Spreading, mat-forming perennial herb up to 30 cm in height. Has rounded stems up to 40 cm long, rooting at nodes and with the flowering stems ascending. Leaves are fleshy, hairy, 4–9 cm long and 2–5 cm wide, serrate or irregularly toothed, normally with pairs of lateral lobes, and dark green above and lighter green below. Its surface is hairy or glabrous, rarely scaly.

Peduncles are 3–10 cm long; involucres are campanulate to hemispherical, about 1 cm high; chaffy bracts are lanceolate, rigid. The flowers are bright yellow ray florets of about 8-13 per head, rays are 6–15 mm long; disk-corollas 4–5 mm long. The pappus is a crown of short fimbriate scales. The seeds are tuberculate achenes, 4–5 mm long. Propagation is mostly vegetatively as seeds are usually not fertile. In the tropics it is free-flowering, and elsewhere it blooms mostly from spring to autumn.

It has a very wide ecological tolerance range, but grows best in sunny areas with well-drained, moist soil at low elevations.