Posted mostly because Tim Evanson posted a photo of wild gaillardias on Google+ a moment ago, and they’re just such gorgeous summer-blooming plants. A great and dependable garden plant, and also available in bunches from florists (as well as growing wild in fields):
Gaillardia …, the [(Indian)] blanket flowers, is a genus of drought-tolerant annual and perennial plants from the sunflower family (Asteraceae), native to North and South America. It was named after M. Gaillard de Charentonneau, an 18th-century French magistrate who was a patron of botany. The common name refers to the inflorescence’s resemblance to brightly patterned blankets made by native Americans. (link)
[Note the problem the Wikipedia writers have in dealing with subject-verb agreement when the subject is a (singular) mass noun (gaillardia) with a plural count noun (blanket flowers) in apposition to it. There are several ways out of the conflict: use a count counterpart to gaillardia, which can be pluralized (“Gaillardias, the blanket flowers, are a genus of…” — with gaillardias ‘species of gaillardia’ or gaillardias ‘gaillardia plants’); use the mass type-name counterpart to blanket flower, which will be singular (“Gaillardia, the blanket flower, is a genus of…”); or punt in one one or another (“Gaillardia is a genus of…; the plants are also known as blanket flowers”, for instance).]
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