What Are the Types of Gerber Daisies?

Petal Color

• The two wild parent species are native to the Transvaal grasslands of northern South Africa. Gerbera jamesoni bears large orange-scarlet petals and G. viridiflora bears small white petals with a hint of lilac. From these parent species, the patented hybrid cultivars range from pale cream to yellow to a wide range of reds and oranges.

Petal Row Type

• Gerbera flower heads are bred to three petal row types: single, semi-double and double. The single head has one row of broad petals. The semi-double has additional broad petals that are not a complete second row. The double head has two complete rows of narrow petals. The "spider" flower heads are bred to have dense narrow to needle-like double rows.

Floret Type

• The semi-double and double flower head types may have an inner row (ray) of floret petals. The small inner ray is merely a few petals of irregular shapes and sizes. The medium inner ray is a complete row of small florets, less than half the size of the outer petals. The large floret ray is more than half the size of the outer petals and may be more than one complete row.

Leaf Type

• The wild Gerberas are densely hairy on the underside of the leaves, but hybrids may have shiny leaves. Leaf shape can be arrowhead or elliptical, with or without scallops on the edges. Bioengineering studies are examining Gerberas gene-by-gene for a correlation between hybrid leaf and resistance to diseases such as powdery mildew, crown rot and root rot.

Other Character Types

• The wild Gerbera daisies have light yellow to yellow-green central disks, but hybrids may have brown to purplish black to black central disks. The flower heads of hybrids range from petals with tips curved below the level of the flower involucre (petal row), to tips held at the same level, to tips held as much as 45 degrees.