Felicia Aethiopica

''Felicia aethiopica'' is a low shrublet of up to about high that is assigned to the family Asteraceae. It has rigid, leathery, inverted egg-shaped leaves, with only the lowest pair set oppositely. It has flower heads with an involucre of about in diameter with bracts that each contain three resin ducts, and have one whorl of twelve to fourteen ray florets with about 11 mm long and 1½ mm wide blue straps surrounding many yellow disc florets. The plant is called wild aster or dwarf Felicia in English, and wilde-aster or bloublombossie in Afrikaans. Flowering occurs year-round. Wild aster can be found in the Western and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa.

Description

''Felicia aethiopica'' subsp. ''aethiopica'' is a low, up to high, branched shrublet. Its shoots are loosely hairy to glandular. The lower stems are covered by reddish bark. The rigidly leathery leaves mostly set alternately along the stems, only those at base are oppositely set (rarely also higher on the shoot opposite), usually standing out at a straight angle, those lower on the stem even often weakly descending. The leaves are narrow to broadly elliptic to inverted egg-shaped, long and wide, with rolled down margins, hairless to strong bristly hairy and glandular, and anything intermediate.

The flower heads sit individually on the clearly distinguished inflorescence stalks that are mostly richly glandular near the top. The bracts surrounding the head that jointly form the involucre of up to in diameter, are arranged in two whorls. The bracts of the inner whorl are Inverted lance-shaped, about long and wide, ribbed, and a little bristly. The outer bracts are lance-shaped, about long and 1 mm wide, with three sunken resin ducts, and consistent with the indumentum of the leaves, variously bristly hairy or also glandular. About twelve to fourteen female ray florets have a blue strap of ligula of about long and 1½ mm (0.06 in) wide, blue. These surround many bisexual, disc florets with a yellow corolla of about long. In the center of each corolla are five free filaments and five anthers merged into a tube, through which the style grows when the floret opens, hoovering up the pollen on its shaft. At the tip of both style branches is a triangular appendage. Around the base of the corolla is one whorl of vigorous, equally long, white, shortly toothed, but smooth at their base, largely persistent pappus bristles of about long. The eventually black, dry, one-seeded, indehiscent fruits called cypselae are inverted egg-shaped to elliptic, about long and 1½ mm (0.06 in) wide, have a ridge along the outline, are hairless or rarely have a few bristles near the top, and a further smooth seedskin.

''Felicia aethiopica'' subsp. ''ecklonis'' differs in having entirely hairy cypselae.

Differences with related species

''Felicia aethiopica'' is often confused with ''Felicia amoena'' and '' Felicia amelloides''. ''F. aethiopica'' is a woody shrublet with mostly only the lowest pair of leaves opposite and the remainder alternate, twelve to fourteen ray florets and also can be distinguished by the three resin ducts in the involucral bracts, that lack in both other species. ''F. amoena'' is a biennial or perennial plant with at least the lowest four to six leaves in pairs as well as those at each branching, and the remainder alternate and may have up to twenty five ray florets. ''F. amelloides'' is a mostly perennial plant with all its leaves in pairs and about twelve ray florets.

Taxonomy

The wild aster was first described in 1768 by Nicolaas Laurens Burman, based on a specimen in the herbarium collection of his father, the Dutch botanist and physician Johannes Burman, that had been collected at ''Caput Bonae Spei'', a term used for the southwest of the Cape Province. He named it ''Aster aethiopicus''. Henri Cassini in 1817 described ''Agathaea microphylla''. In 1822, Kurt Polycarp Joachim Sprengel described ''Cineraria trachyphylla''. In 1832, Christian Friedrich Lessing described ''Aster ecklonis''. He also described ''Aster capensis'', based on a herbarium sheet that contains one twig of ''Felicia aethiopica'' and two twigs of ''F. amelloides'', and this has since created much confusion. Cassini's taxon was reassigned to the genus ''Cineraria'' by Jens Vahl, who created the combination ''C. microphylla'' in 1836. Carl Heinrich "Bipontinus" Schultz described a slightly different plant in 1843, calling it ''Agathaea kraussii'', but he demoted it a year later to ''Agathaea amelloides β kraussii''. In 1865, William Henry Harvey, reassigned Schultz's taxon to ''Aster'', creating ''A. kraussii'', but he also described ''Aster aethiopicus'' var. ''glandulosus''. Bolus and Anthony Hurt Wolley-Dod assign the species to the genus ''Felicia'' in 1950, creating the combination ''Felicia aethiopica''. Jürke Grau in his 1973 ''Revision of the genus ''Felicia'' (Asteraceae)'', considered tall these names synonymous, except for ''Aster ecklonis'' Less., that he considered a subspecies, calling it ''F. aethiopica'' subsp. ''ecklonis''. The species is considered to be part of the section Neodetris.

The species name Latin ''aethiopica'' is a Latin word meaning "relating to Ethiopia or Africa in general".

Distribution, habitat and ecology

''Felicia aethiopica'' subsp. ''aethiopica'' has the smaller distribution of the subspecies. It is restricted to the Cape Peninsula, the Kogelberg area, the neighborhood of Hermanus and Gansbaai, the Potberg and near Swellendam. Subsp. ''ecklonis'' stretches from the Cedarberg in the north via the mountains near Porterville to Riviersonderend and Witsand to Natal. It grows on sandy or rocky flats and slopes.

Conservation

The continued survival of both subspecies of ''Felicia aethiopica'' is considered to be of least concern because their populations are stable.

References

External links

Line drawing of ''Felicia aethiopica ecklonis''

Distribution maps of both subspecies of ''Felicia aethiopica''

{{Taxonbar, from=Q5857996

amoena
Endemic flora of the Cape Provinces
Plants described in 1768
Taxa named by Nicolaas Laurens Burman