How lucky! Where were they reduced?

I bought a packet of African Daisy "Giant mixed colors" just this past Saturday. I felt lazy and yet impatient to start them so I just throw them on the ground and raked them in along where my blanket flowers are thriving and self seeding.

The seed package said they like lite infertile soil ✓, moderate water✓, strong sun✓, and that they bloom best during cooler times of the year. Thats now in zone 10. From what I gather online it looks like the botanical name is dimorphotheca sinuata. The package oddly enough didn't have it printed anywhere.

Yes, they were on sale. I think I'll try to grow one pack in a container and one pack in the ground and see what happens. I did read something about them needing light to germinate. One site said to just put them on top of the ground in a sunny spot and push them down into contact with the soil and another said put a very light coating of soil over them.

Each plant can be a foot across, so unless your packs are very small and your container is very large you’ll need to find more space for them.

floral_uk - thank you! I remember now that they are very large at the garden centers. I have plenty of "in ground" space for them, and several large containers that I make into mixed containers every year. Sounds like they would be a good center plant for those containers with some nice trailing flowers and vines around them.

I've got some sprouts! I read on Dave's garden ( I hope I'm allowed to mention that site lol) that they can perennialize in some parts and that they're easily propagated from cutting.

Does your seed packet give a botanical name? ‘African Daisy’ is not precise enough to know whether you have an annual or perennial.

No it doesn't, but I think it's dimorphotheca sinuata so I'm referencing that species. If it simply self seeds then it's just the same to me as if it were perennial.

The problem I have here is with plants whose seeds attempt to sprout during the summer rainy season when they either rot or are eaten by slugs or grasshoppers so if it doesn't try to do that then it stands a chance at naturalizing.

Yes, D sinuata is an annual.

Mine is Dimorphoteca sinuata (syn. Dimorphoteca aurantica), mixed yellow, orange, apricot and white. The more colorful perennial African daisies are in the Osteospermum family, but they never last through the summer for me and they're expensive. This is from Wikipedia

Osteospermum /ˌɒstiəˈspɜːrməm, -tioʊ-/,[1][2] is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the Calenduleae, one of the smaller tribes of the sunflower/daisy family Asteraceae. They are known as the daisybushes[3] or African daisies.

Osteospermum used to belong to the genus Dimorphotheca, but only the annual species remain in that genus; the perennials belong to Osteospermum. The genus Osteospermum is also closely related to the small genus Chrysanthemoides, such as C. incana and C. monilifera.