Mairia crenata is a small, low-growing perennial from the daisy family, native to the mountains of the southwestern and southern Cape in South Africa. It forms rosettes of leathery, spoon-shaped leaves from a woody rootstock and suits gardeners who want a compact fynbos-style groundcover in sharply drained soil.
Family
Asteraceae (Daisy family)
Grows as
Perennial
Light
Full sun, Part shade
Water
Water sparingly during the growing season and let the soil dry out between waterings; avoid waterlogging.
Soil
Free-draining, gritty or sandy mix, low in nutrients, similar to fynbos sandstone soils.
Temperature
Mild to cool conditions; tolerates light frost, protect below about -5 °C.
How easy
Moderate
Native range
SW. & S. Cape Prov.
Climate
subtropical
About
Mairia crenata is a perennial herbaceous plant of mostly 2–15 cm (1–6 in) high that is assigned to the family Asteraceae. It has a woody rootstock of up to 5 cm (2 in) long, from which brown, fleshy roots develop. The five to eighteen, hard and leathery, spoon-shaped leaves are in one to three rosettes, have a distinct main vein, blunt or pointy tip, often dark red or blackish margins with rounded teeth and a 1⁄2–2 cm (0.2–0.8 in) long stalk-like foot, often initially somewhat woolly hairy, on particularly the lower surface and the main vein, but this is easily rubbed off the shiny surfaces.
Where it grows
M. crenata has the largest distribution of any species of Mairia. It has an isolated population on Table Mountain. From Du Toitskloof Pass and the Hottentots Holland Mountains in the west, it can be found along the length of the Riviersonderend Mountains, the Langeberg, the Outeniqua Mountains and Tsitsikamma Mountains all the way to the Kouga Mountains on the eastern end. It grows in fynbos vegetations on sandstone slopes.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Mairia crenata by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.