Lots of people wear purple. It looks good. But I’ve never seen anyone in purple top it off with a bright yellow hat! It’s not a colour combination by design!
Michaelmas Daises are the bad taste heroes of the gardening world. Whoever designed them must have had a bad day. No-one over the whole of human history ever painted a room in these colours. And yet here’s a flower that glories in its defiance of rational design standards.
And somehow it works. I love to see them in the late summer. There they are stomping through the hedgerows, somehow unremarkable yet powerful. Maybe it’s their height that makes them stand out, not low on the ground but tall enough to be seen.
Aster is a part of the Family Compositae, so called because their flowers are made up of many tiny florets. The male flowers around the edge of the daisy each grows its own petal. The Michaelmas Daisy’s males chose a purple petal and the female florets in the centre, stuck out their bright yellow tongues.
Maybe you don’t think they’re bad taste? If so, I look forward to seeing photos of your purple and yellow outfit or living room. But it goes to show, there’s a subjective dimension to design. How do you know when design is good?
This is the second in a series of stories about flowers. The last was: Buttercups. The next one is: Bindweed.