This morning I was walking through a fynbos patch near Uilkraalsmond, east of Gansbaai. It has been a very hot and dry few months in the Cape, the veld is looking decidedly drab and dry, and I was not expecting to see much in the way of flowers. Then a splash of color caught my eye and on closer inspection I found a patch of these beautiful Stoebe capitata.
If you look closely you will see that the flower head is made up of hundreds of delicate star-shapes mauve to pink florets. This characteristic of flower heads containing many individual small flowers, or florets, is typical of the family Asteraceae (the daisy family).
Stoebe capitata flowers through the height of summer (December to March) and grows on sandstone slopes and coastal forelands in the southwestern and Eastern Cape.
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