Daisies

Common flowers that grow profusely in green fields and lawns of grass, blooming during spring and summer. The flowerhead of each daisy (which is not actually a single flower, but a dense grouping of many individual florets) appears with a golden central disc surrounded by a halo of white petals. The most familiar daisies are tiny - typically about two centimetres in diameter - but other flowers bearing the name 'daisy', such as the 'ox-eye daisy' or 'dog daisy', can grow much larger.

Daisies close their the petals during the night, opening them as the Sun rises in the morning, and their faces then follow the Sun across the sky. For this reason they became known as 'day's eyes', a name shortened to give rise to the familiar 'daisies'. It is this origin of their name that lies behind Bilbo's riddle of the daisy, where he describes the flower as an 'eye', with the eye of the Sun looking down on it.

When Sam Gamgee attempted to describe Galadriel to Faramir, one of the images he used was that of a maid with daises in her hair. Here he seems to be referring to a 'daisy chain', a string of flowers made by threading together the stems of many daisies to create a simple floral ornament that can be worn on the head.