Serruria villosa

Serruria villosa, the golden spiderhead and previously botanically S. vallaris, is an erect, multi-stemmed shrublet reaching 30 cm to 80 cm in height.

The upcurving leaves are finely divided, needle-like and covered in silky hairs. The stem-tip leaves may be yellow-green, otherwise deep green, sometimes black-tipped. Leaf length ranges from 2 cm to 4 cm.

Solitary, stalkless flowerheads are borne at stem-tips. Each flowerhead consists of about twenty yellow florets surrounded by upper leaves and lanceolate involucral bracts. The specific name, villosa, is a Latin word meaning hairy, referring to the shaggy white hairs on the perianths initially covering the styles and visible in the photo.

The styles become about 1 cm long, the flowerhead up to 2,5 cm wide. Flowering happens from before mid-autumn to after midwinter.

The seeds are brown and hairy, ripe about two months after blooming. They germinate with autumn rains wherever the ants had carried them for eating the elaiosome attachments in their underground nests.

The species distribution is only in the Cape Peninsula fynbos on sandstone slopes and flats. Although this range-restricted, rare plant lives where the human population is large, its own population is considered to be stable early in the twenty first century. Much of the undeveloped land here is protected or forms part of a national park (Manning, 2007; http://pza.sanbi.org; http://redlist.sanbi.org).