Athrixia fontana

Athrixia fontana, commonly known in Southern Sotho as sepinare and previously scientifically as A. drakensbergensis, is a tufted perennial reaching about 30 cm in height when in flower.

The simple, stalkless leaves grow in a basal rosette. These leaves are narrow to elliptic with sunken midribs, entire margins and pointed tips. They are softly hairy, glandular above and felted below. Smaller stem leaves alternate up the flowering stems. Leaf dimensions are up to 8 cm long and 2 cm wide. 

Solitary flowerheads are produced in summer up to after midautumn. The single ring of female white ray florets spread to 2,5 cm around a yellow disc of bisexual florets. The rays may be suffused with slight pink or mauve. The funnel-shaped involucre consists of six to eight rows of spreading and overlapping bracts that are bristle-tipped and woolly. The receptacles have no scales. 

The fruit is cylindrical and ribbed, its pappus with two rows of rough-textured bristles and scales. 

The distribution is inland in the Eastern Cape, the east of the Free State, mainly in the southwest of KwaZulu-Natal and Lesotho, also in Mpumalanga. The photo was taken near the Sani Pass.

The habitat is moist, montane grassland of the Drakensberg. The habitat population is deemed of least concern early in the twenty first century (Manning, 2009; iNaturalist; https://www.worldfloraonline.org; http://redlist.sanbi.org).