About Ursinia nana DC.
Ursinia nana DC. is an annual herb in the daisy family, Asteraceae. It is native to Africa, with a disjunct natural range covering northeastern Africa (Eritrea and Ethiopia) and southern Africa (South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia, and Zimbabwe). This species acts as a pioneer plant that colonizes disturbed ground, and typically only grows to 30 centimeters in height. It flowers throughout the rainy season, and will continue flowering well into autumn if the weather remains mild with late rain. Its leaves are deeply laciniate and grow in clustered bunches. In 1912, the German botanist Reinhold Conrad Muschler published a description of a putative new African composite species, Ursinia engleriana, collected near Okahandja in South West Africa, in his contribution to the journal Botanische Jahrbücher für Systematik, Pflanzengeschichte und Pflanzengeographie. This species was later reclassified as a synonym of Ursinia nana, which was originally described by de Candolle. Muschler noted that the species is extremely ornamental. The genus Ursinia was named to honor German scholar Johannes Heinrich Ursinus, who lived from 1608 to 1667.
