Felicia echinata, commonly known as the dune daisy or prickly felicia, is a species of shrub native to South Africa belonging to the daisy family (Compositae or Asteraceae). It grows to 1 m (3.3 ft) high and bears blue-purple flower heads with yellow central discs. In the wild, it flowers from April to October.

Description:

Dune Felicia, is an upright, strongly branching shrublet of up to 1 m (3.3 ft) high. The well-branching stems are alternately and often densely set with thick, inclined, overlapping leaves of 10–14 mm (0.39–0.55 in) long and 3–5 mm (0.12–0.20 in) wide, hairless or fringed. and also, on the upper leaf surface with hairs and, below the upper leaf surface, with many roundish glands. As in almost all Asteraceae, the individual florets are 5-merous, small, and clustered in typical “composite” heads, surrounded by an involucre of three or four whorls of lanceolate bracts, the outer 4 mm (0.16 in) long and 1 mm (0.039 in) wide, the inner 9 mm (0.35 in) long and 1.2 mm (0.047 in) wide, all with rough hairs that become glandular near the bract tip. In Felicia echinata, the center of the head contains many yellow disc florets of 3–4 mm (0.12–0.16 in) long, and is surrounded by one single whorl of about 25 bluish-purple, rarely white, ligulate florets 13 mm (0.51 in) long and 1.8 mm (0.071 in) wide, which are hairy at their base. These florets sit on a common base (or receptacle) 15 mm (0.59 in) across and are not individually subtended by a bract. The one-seeded fruits (or cypselas) are inverted, egg-shaped to oval, yellow-brown to reddish in color, have two conspicuous vascular bundles along their edge, and are crowned by a circle of many, 4 mm (0.16 in)-long, bone-colored hairs, with small teeth along their length and slightly wider at the tip. The surface of those belonging to the ligulate florets are hairless, those of the disc florets have very short hairs. Solitary flower heads sit at the tip of a 0–4 cm (0.0–1.6 in) long peduncles, in few-headed, umbel-like inflorescences.

Habitat:

An endemic of the Cape Floristic Region, and only occurs in a narrow strip along the south coast between Mossel Bay and Bathurst.

• Location: Durbanville Nature Reserve, Durbanville, South Africa
• Date Taken: 2020-10-25
• Camera: Canon EOS 7D Mark II
• Lens: Canon Zoom Lens EF-S 18-200 mm 3-5.6 IS
• Exposure Program: Manual
• Image Quality: RAW
• F-Stop: f/6.3
• Exposure Time: 1/160 sec
• ISO Speed: ISO-100
• Focal Length: 200 mm
• Metering Mode: Spot Metering
• Handheld
• Post Processing: Adobe Photoshop CS6
• Photographer: Coreen Kuhn
• Information: Wikipedia

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