Matricaria (Summer Snow)
By Telme8
Vale of Glamorgan,
Wales 
Hello Folks, I bought a packet of Matricaria Seeds back in the Spring. A perenial ideal for growing in pots or bedding. it says to plant out 10" appart. They are doing very well but look suspitiously like the double fever few which I already have growing like weeds!!! I looked it up on the internet and it says it is a medicinal plant for tea and digestion and nervous complaints, which I think the fever few is. Can anyone enlighten me is it the same plant. I stupidly thought it was one of those miniture Chrysanthemums. If any one out there knows it well, does it seed freely like the feaver few? only by the instructions on the packet it says to grow indoors and harden off well, I don't put feaver few in that catagory.
9 Aug, 2009
Answers
My mum grew this once and I took one look at it and said, "Thats just a cultivar of Feverfew".
It is also not a perennial, or at best, a very short lived one.
Bamboo is correct in that the original genus Chrysanthemum has been split up and now includes genera such as Matricaria, Dendrathema, Leucanthemum, Pyrethrum, Argyranthemum etc. The only members of this group to remain in Chrysanthemum are the annual species such as the Corn Marigold (Chrysanthemum segetum) or the Tri-coloured Daisy (Chrysanthemum carinatum).
10 Aug, 2009
Thanks to you both at least I feel a little better now, having tried something a little different from my massed seedlings of feeverfew.
11 Aug, 2009
Hey, Fractal, where has Feverfew been put in the new order?
11 Aug, 2009
Lots of questions in one there! First off, Feverfew was one of the chrysanthemum family, though I don't know where it is now since they changed the name to Dendranthema and split the chrysanth family up into different names; Matricaria isn't. I don't know why the seed packet said to start it off indoors - you can sow outside later straight in the garden. My book tells me Matricaria is a sort of false camomile, and can be used for lightening the hair, and has medicinal uses similar to camomile. I don't know if it seeds like Feverfew, but I can't see why it wouldn't - you'll have to let us know!
9 Aug, 2009