Gerbera

£2.40

A Sympathy card featuring a close up of a gerbera with pale pink petals and text ‘With Deepest Sympathy’

– Blank inside for your own message
– Printed in the UK on premium card stock
– Supplied with a white envelope

In stock

SKU: C0280 Category:

Description

Gerbera

Gerbera is a sympathy card featuring a close up of the flower with pale pink petals and text ‘With Deepest Sympathy’

The gerbera is named after a German doctor and botonist Traugott Gerber (1709 – 1743). Yet in all probability he never saw the plant. Gerber was born in Zodel in Silesia in what is now within the Neißeaue municipality in Saxony. That puts it more or less on the border with Poland, so he had an early acquaintance with the East. And that may go some way to explaining how he came to be director of the Physic Garden in Moscow. He travelled all over Europe, China, and Russia, collecting plants, and wrote three books describing the flora of regions of Russia.

Jan Frederic Gronovius

Gerber did not, however, travel to Africa. And it was there that the gerbera was discovered by Jan Frederic Gronovius, a Dutch botanist who was a patron of Linnaeus.. He discovered the plant in South Africa in 1737. The date when this happened may explain why Gronovius agreed and Linnaeus named the plant after Gerber. That is to say that the position of director of the Moscow Physic Garden was abolished in 1742. Gerber was out of a job and he died the next year. He was only thirty-three years old.

Consequently, it is hard not to picture him depressed after losing his position. That is especially so considering it is where he had spent all of his working life. Therefore, it is likely that Gronovius and Linnaeus wished to honour a botanist whom they respected. And that would be so even though Gerber’s connection with the plant was tenuous to say the least. Perhaps it is the very cheerful appearance of the plant that decided them to name it after Gerber.

Gerbera Is A Heliotropic Plant

About the plant itself, we now know that species of gerbera are found in South America and Asia as well as Africa. In fact, they can grow anywhere that the temperature stays above zero. The plant is heliotropic, meaning that its head follows the sun in its arc across the skies during the day.

And that explains why florists hang cut gerberas upside down so that they are not tempted to follow the light and bend. Gerberas are known to bend and droop. So hanging them upside down goes some way to preventing them being inclined to droop as soon as they are put in a vase.

Thousands Of Cultivars And Many Colours

There are thousands of cultivars nowadays resulting from crossing different varieties, and you find them in all the colours of the rainbow, like flowers from a child’s painting box. Colours include white, yellow, orange, red, and the pink in our example. There are even some that have petals of several different colours on the same flower

SKU: C0280

A close up of a gerbera with pale pink petals and text 'With Deepest Sympathy'
Gerbera
£2.40