Weak Coffee and Daisies

I made some absolutely horrible weak coffee this morning from the grounds left behind after M left. We're not coffee drinkers here in my house in CA, so M had to go buy his own grounds and we spent a few days perfecting the percolation method. I refused to let him use any of my tea paraphernalia for his coffee, so he had to buy his own tea strainer and use it over a non-tea mug, all a huge hassle in order for me to maintain the integrity of my tea. Which is important.

These are the only gerbera daisies left after I brought home a huge bouquet from the greenhouse. There are lots of experiments going on in the greenhouse where I do my GSR (a graduate student research position), mostly on gerbera daisies and roses. So every so often there will be a bucket set out with over a hundred flowers that have been cut from the plants in order for the next phase of the experiment to proceed. Getting the first pick of them is rare; usually I show up and there are three or four lonely bedraggled flowers left over after the rush of other students and research assistants pick them over. But two weeks ago I was in the greenhouse doing my own experiment and I saw a girl pass by carrying hundreds of gerberas just slung over her shoulder and I knew that today was my day. I got a huge bouquet of them, almost fifty, and they have lasted for two whole weeks.


I've always been kind of disdainful of gerberas because they are impossible to grow as houseplants and they have to be wired in flower arrangements to keep them nice and straight and keep them from drooping. Sometimes florists take clear plastic straw-type things and slip the stems in there to keep them straight, but inevitably the stem will rot and look gross. However, I've discovered that if you change the water fairly frequently and continue to cut the stems to reveal new vascular tissue for water uptake, then they last forever! It's great, I think I am a convert.

The reason they last so long is that the "flower" is actually an inflorescence made up of many tiny flowers like many other plants in the Asteraceae family. Sunflowers, dandelions, etc, are all asters with "ray flowers" which look like the individual petals, and "disk flowers" in the middle. So basically they just keep blooming in the water and will last a really long time because when they are harvested most of the flowers haven't bloomed yet. It's funny because they get really hairy looking as the disk flowers begin to bloom. I can't wait until the next harvest.