Marigold .....an inflorescence

                                                                         

Ralf Warldo Emerson said "Earth laughs in flowers". So if you want to be healthy, Wealthy and wise then, make an interest in gardening and be a member of that garden. Marigold is one of the common and most popular flowers in India  and its generic epithet is Tegates . The common species are T.erecta (African marigold), T.petula (French marigold) and T.tenuifulia (Signet marigold), etc.

                       The African marigold has different varities like"Giant double " , 'African Orange', "Crack Jack","Guinea Gold ","Climax","Tordeaur",and "Yellow Supreme". It's color range from orange .lemon yellow and golden yellow. The size of the flowers range from 5-15 cm.

                      

                      On the other hand, the size of French marigold is small and ranges from 2.5 - 5 cm, color range from yellow, golden, rusty red, mahogany,orange,deep-scarlet and spotted type. It has 7 varities like Rusty red, Red brocade, Valencia, Susana, Butterball, Star of India and Harmony.The signet marigold is smaller than the avobe two and the height of the plant is upto 1foot.

                  Marigold belongs to the family Compositae or Asteraceae which is the largest  among the all Angiosperm family containing over 950 genera and about 20000 species. Taxonomists like Engler and Rendle have treated this family as the most advance and the last evolved family of the dicotyledons; though Bentham and Hooker as well as Huchinson did not treated it so.

                  By mistake we treat the inflorecense as a flower, actually it is a combination of large number of flower on the  expanded and short swollen peduncle  which is termed as head or capitulum.The infloresence may be of homogamous or heterogamous. The homopgamous head is made up of only one kind of flowers (florets) ,but the heterogamous has two types of flowers. In heterogamous the marginal florets are sterile (neutar) or female, and these are termed as ray florets whereas the central bisexual are the disc florets. The ligular marginal florets acts as flag apperatous to attrack insects for pollination. The calyx of the flower modifies into pappus to act as a parachute for the  dispersal of fruit and seed.Some taxonomists treat the pappus homologous with calyx, while Ramiah and Sayeduddin (1958) treated pappus as emergence or trichome of the upper portion of the ovary.

               

                A few other ornamental garden plants of this family are Dalhia,Chrysantemum, Sunflower,African daisy, Sunshine daisy, Gazania, Helichrysum, Zinnia,Cosmos,Gailardia, etc.

              There is a famous Chinese proverb "When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one and a lily with the other." So be happy and be healthy!