'Gold Star Ruby Tubes' Gaillardia

 Gaillardia pulchella Origin: North America Improvement status: Cultivar Seeds per packet: ~60 Germination tested 12/2021: 96% Life cycle: Annual or Short-lived Perennial Gaillardia, also known as firewheel or blanketflower, is a popular garden plant native from Mexico north through the Great Plains. Typically grown for its beauty, it is also a little known crop plant: the seeds can be ground into a paste and eaten like peanut butter or sunflower butter, and the leaves and powdered root are medicinal (a tea from the leaves is taken internall for gout, and applied externally for sore eyes and nipples irritated by breastfeeding; a root tea is used for gastroenteritis, while chewed powdered root is used for skin disorders; the whole plant is a diuretic). From our friends at Wild Garden Seeds, this is a stunning form of gaillardia, selected from the variety 'Lorenziana,' featuring a natural mutation that has turned the once flat red and yellow petals into tubular little trumpets, red at t