Gaillardia Varieties

Plant Description

• The two parents are good garden subjects in their own rights. Blanketflower, also called firewheel and Indian blanket, has daisy-like flowers with purplish centers and yellow-tipped orange-red petals. Plants grow 18 to 24 inches tall and 12 inches wide, with a mounding habit. Basal gray-green leaves are lance-shaped with serrate edges. Flowers are long-lasting in the garden and live for about a week as a cut flower. Butterflies, bees and hummingbirds visit the flowers, and songbirds eat the seeds. Common gaillardia has yellow petals with a reddish eye and dandelion-like leaves, growing to 4 feet tall. Both species have hairy foliage. Hybrid gaillardias (Gaillardia x grandiflora) combine traits of the parents. In addition, over 24 different species of gaillardia grow natively across the U.S. into Mexico.

Flower Colors

• Hybrids recombine the parents' original yellow, red and orange, blending them and isolating single colors. Among the red flowers are wine-red "Burgundy," growing 24 to 30 inches tall; shorter and deeper-colored "Sunburst Burgundy Silk;" 14- to 20-inch-tall "Burgundy Picotee" with rich dark petals touched with yellow on the tips, and "Gallo Red," a solid dark red with dark burnt-umber centers. A clear yellow, "Mesa Yellow" grows true from seed and is a 2010 All-America Selection. "Tojaker" displays marmalade-orange petals shaded to peach at the tips with an orange-brown center. The taller plants grow to 24 inches and may need staking. New colors appear each year.

Flower Forms

• In some hybrids, petals aren't flat, but modified into individual trumpet-shaped florets, called tubular or fluted florets. Flowers also have numerous petals, with semi-double or double forms. Tubular flowers include "Oranges and Lemons" with peach-colored, yellow-tipped tubular petals surrounding a burnt orange center and "Moxie," with a glowing bright orange center and yellow fluted petals. Full-petaled tubular florets giving a semi-double appearance are red to terra cotta "Tizzy" and "Frenzy," with burgundy petals fading to red and tipped in yellow.

Plant Size

• Dwarf plants are 10 to 12 inches high with large flowers on erect stems. "Goblin" is a flamboyant, long-flowering selection with deep red flowers ringed with yellow. The Arizona series contains "Arizona Apricot," 12 inches tall with 3- to 3 1/2 inch-wide flowers, a 2011 All-America Selection "Arizona Sun," 8 to 10 inches tall and "Arizona Red Shades," crimson-red with a slightly yellow tip. "Baby Cole" lives up to its name, with short 6- to 8-inch-tall plants suited for edges, borders and containers.