Achyranthemum paniculatum yellow-brown buds

Sometimes called the bruidsewejaartjie (bride everlasting) in Afrikaans, Syncarpha paniculata produces stem-tip clusters of numerous discoid florets, now still concealed by papery cones of bracts. The flowerhead bracts start off yellow or pink, later to turn white or creamy. The leaves are narrow, sharply pointed and silvery felted, growing densely on erect branches.

Vlok and Schutte-Vlok describe how large harvests of everlasting flowers (mainly from the genera Syncarpha, Helichrysum, Edmondia and Phaenocoma), used to be collected from the fynbos to decorate “floats” in pageants. This practice lasted until flower availability for seeding of new plants became severely hampered. S. paniculata is a reseeder, not a resprouter.

Never pick as many as half the flowers growing in an area, preferably much less! And respect the law relating to other people’s land as well as permitted distance from public roads when picking a flower. Even the indigenous San people knew long ago not to take all the fruit from a bush in the veld (Euston-Brown and Kruger, 2023; Vlok and Schutte-Vlok, 2015; iNaturalist).