Felicia bellidioides

"Felicia bellidioides" is a perennial plant of up to about high, that is assigned to the daisy family. Most of the narrowly inverted egg-shaped leaves are silky hairy and in a basal rosette with no or few very narrow bracts on the stalk in the subspecies "bellidioides". In the subspecies "foliosa", the narrower leaves are not silky hairy but variously bristly and glandular, with more and larger bracts on the inflorescence stalk. The flowerheads sit individually on top of a long peduncle and consist of an involucre with only two worls of bracts, about twenty purplish blue ray florets, surrounding many yellow disc florets. It occurs in the Western Cape province of South Africa.
Description.
"Felicia bellidioides" subsp. "bellidioides" is a perennial, upwardly growing plant of up to high, sometimes with runners. Its leaves are set alternate along the stems (with the exception of the lowest pair that is opposite), mostly crowded in a basal rosette. The leaves are inverted egg-shaped to narrowly inverted egg-shaped, sometimes with an indistinct stalk, either broader and shorter, long and wide, and then usually white silky hairy, or 2½–3 cm (1.0–1.2 in) long and wide and distinctly hairy, or longer, long and 1½–5 mm (0.06–0.2 in) wide and usually short bristly and glandular hairs. In all forms the leaf margins rarely carry a few teeth.
Flowers and seeds.
The flower heads are individually set on top of an up to long stalk, that mostly carries no bracts but rarely very narrow bracts. The involucre is up to in diameter and consists of a double row of long bracts. The outer bracts are lance-shaped, about 1½ mm (0.06 in) wide, and carry long hairs or glandular bristles. The inner bracts are narrowly inverted egg-shaped and about 2 mm (0.08 in) wide, with a few hairs and a papery margin. Each flower head carries about twenty ray florets, with a purplish blue ligula of about long and 3 mm (0.12 in) wide. These encircle numerous disc florets, with a yellow corolla of up to 3 mm long. Encircling the base of the corolla are many white, toothed, deciduous, pappus bristles of 2–3 mm (0.08–0.12 in) long. The eventually black, dry, one-seeded, indehiscent fruits called cypsellae are inverted egg-shaped, about 2½ mm (0.1 in) long and wide, set with fine scales and with up to long hair, and are edged with an mostly brighter coloured ridge around the outline.
Subspecies.
"Felicia bellidioides" subsp. "foliata" differs from the typical subspecies by having bracts higher up the peduncles, clearly stalked, longer and narrower leaves of 1–6 cm long and –4 mm wide, without the silky hairs.
Taxonomy.
Rudolf Schlechter was the first to describe this species in 1897, based on a specimen collected on the Matroosberg at an altitude of about in 1895 by Rudolf Marloth. Jürke Grau in his 1973 "Revision of the genus Felicia (Asteraceae)" distinguished a form with bracts higher up the peduncle, stalked, longer and narrower leaves without the silky hair characteristic of the typical form. He named it "Felicia bellidioides" subsp. "foliata", the type of which has been collected by Barker on the Voetpadsberg between Worcester and Laingsburg in 1951. The species is considered to be part of the section Neodetris. The species name "bellidioides" has been compounded from the Latin "bellis" referring to the genus "Bellis", and the Greek suffix "-oides", which means "in the form of".
Distribution, habitat and ecology.
"Felicia bellidioides" subsp. "bellidioides" is known from the Hottentots Holland Mountains in the southwest to Matroosberg in the northeast. Isolated subpopulations of this subspecies also occurs in the Riviersonderend Mountains near Genadendal, the Groot Winterhoek Mountains near Gouda, the Anysberg, and the Klein Swartberg near Ladysmith. Subsp. foliosa borders the distribution a to the north and east, from the Cederberg, the Kouebokkeveld Mountains, Keeromsberg, the Witteberg near Laingsburg, Eendracht near Montagu, and the Swartberg Pass. The species is restricted to altitudes of , where it often grows in cracks in the rocks.
Conservation.
Both subspecies of "Felicia bellidioides" have a stable population and their continued survival is considered to be of least concern.