I was perusing openclipart a few weeks back and found a remix by andy that used the starburst effect I've been noticing in a lot of designwork lately...
so I asked the guru if there was some simple way of achieving that in inkscape. Like the guru he is, he offered to put together a 'How I did it' guide and put that up at openclipart too. http://openclipart.org/media/howididit/76
So - I've been having a play - because I'm trying to teach myself some of the basics of drawing with inkscape - and I did this gerbera...
Basically it uses the same technique described by Andy in the how to - but I'd modified the basic triangle to use curves, and gradient. Nice. Then I grouped and duped, offset the copy and faded down the opacity...