Felicia

Felicia is a genus of small shrubs, perennial or annual herbaceous plants, with 85 known species, that is assigned to the daisy family (Compositae or Asteraceae). Like in almost all Asteraceae, the individual flowers are 5-merous, small and clustered in typical heads, and which are surrounded by an involucre of, in this case between two and four whorls of, bracts. In Felicia, the centre of the head is taken by yellow, seldom whitish or blackish blue disc florets, and is almost always surrounded by one single whorl of mostly purple, sometimes blue, pink, white or yellow ligulate florets and rarely ligulate florets are absent. These florets sit on a common base (or receptacle) and are not individually subtended by a bract (or palea). Most species occur in the Cape Floristic Region, which is most probably the area where the genus originates and had most of its development. Some species can be found in the eastern half of Africa up to Sudan and the south-western Arabian peninsula, while on the west coast species can be found from the Cape to Angola and one species having outposts on the Cameroon-Nigeria border and central Nigeria. Some species of Felicia are cultivated as ornamentals and several hybrids have been developed for that purpose. Taxonomy Aster tenellus, that was figured by the early English botanist Leonard Plukenet in 1692, was the first species recorded that is now included in the genus Felicia (as F. tenella). This was followed in 1700 by Aster fruticosus, again by Plukenet, repeated by Caspar Commelin in 1701, a species now called Felicia fruticosa. Such names published before 1753, the year that was chosen as a starting point for the binomial nomenclature proposed by Carl Linnaeus, are not valid however. In 1761, John Hill erected the genus Coelestina widely considered a later synonym of Ageratum, but the plant that was illustrated most likely is the same species as F. amelloides. In 1763, Carl Linnaeus describes Cineraria amelloides (F. amelloides), the first valid name for a species assigned today to Felicia. In 1763, French botanist Michel Adanson described a new genus, Detris, without mentioning a species, but apparently having F. amelloides in mind. Peter Jonas Bergius, a botanist from Sweden, described Aster hyssopifolius in 1767, now known as F. hyssopifolia. A year later, Dutch botanist Pieter Burman the Younger added Aster aethiopicus (now F. aethiopica).