Big, bright Shasta daisies are peaking now like mounds of pure, gold-dusted summer snow. They attract large and little pollinators, including monarch butterflies.
We can thank the renowned California horticulturist Luther Burbank for his painstaking efforts to create these beauties, according to what I’ve read.
He developed these hybrids (Leucanthemum x superbum) in the 1890s to resemble the snowcap of nearby Mount Shasta, according to the literature. To do so, he reportedly cross-bred daisy species from North America, Europe and Japan to obtain a larger, sturdier, and longer-blooming daisy with glowing white petals.
(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on July 13 and 17, 2026.)