Felicia (plant)
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, seldomly 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.[2]
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 binominal 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). This is followed by Aster cymbalariae (William Aiton, 1789), Leysseria ovata and Pteronia echinata (Carl Peter Thunberg, 1800 and 1823), Aster filifolius (Étienne Pierre Ventenat, 1804), and Cineraria bergeriana (Kurt Polycarp Joachim Sprengel, 1826), now F. cymbalariae, F. ovata, F. echinata, F. filifolius and F. bergeriana.[2]
In 1815, French Asteraceae specialist Henri Cassini begun his work to rearrange the genera of the Asteraceae, splitting off species that had been assigned to Aster up till that moment but are now accepted in Felicia, starting with erecting Agatacha. This name was probably a typographical error, since he replaced it by Agathaea in the following year. In 1817 he created Charieis, and followed up with Felicia in 1818. He erected Munychia in 1825 to accommodate Aster cymbalariae. Only of the species he assigned to his new genus Diplopappus (1819) none are currently included in Felicia. At that moment in time, 17 species currently included in Felicia were known to science.[2]
Because of the extensive collecting in the Cape Region by Drège, Ecklon and Zeyher, during the next decade the number of known species expanded rapidly. In 1832, Christian Friedrich Lessing moved most species Cassini distributed over his new genera back to Aster, although he assigned Cineraria bergerana to Elphegea, and created the new combinations Diplopappus fruticosa and D. filifolia. A year later, Nees von Esenbeck considered the assignment of current Felicia species. He thought Charieis was synonymous to the older genus Kaulfussia, agreed mostly with the split created by Cassini, includes the species of the section Lignofelicia in Diplostephium (Kunth, 1820), and created the genus Detridium for Cineraria bergerana. Augustin Pyramus de Candolle in 1836 recognises Agathaea, Diplopappus, Felicia and Munychia, together 49 species, most of which are assigned to Felicia today. Consecutive authors can roughly be divided in lumpers that brought together many species in Aster, and splitters that proposed narrow taxa, and both groups eventually converged on Felicia in its current circumscription. Jürke Grau revised the genus in 1973 and described seventeen new species (F. alba, F. caespitosa, F. canaliculata, F. clavipilosa, F. comptonii, F. joubertinae, F. merxmuellerii, F. microcephala, F. monocephala, F. nigrescens, F. nordenstamii, F. oleosa, F. stenophylla and F. tsitsikamae), alongside eight new subspecies.[2] Only four species have been described since: F. flava by Henk Jaap Beentje (1999),[3] F. martinsiana (2007) by Santiago Ortiz,[4] F. josephinae (2002) by John Manning and Peter Goldblatt,[5] and F. douglasii in 2018 by Manning, Anthony Maggee and James Boatwright.[6] Currently, 85 species have been assigned to Felicia.
Although Felicia has been commonly used for a long time, it is not the oldest name. In principle, Detris, as the earliest name, should have priority, but it was suppressed in favour of the widely used name Felicia.[2] In 2010, it was proposed to also conserve Felicia over Agathaea, Charieis and Coelestina, because these names also precede Felicia and should get priority otherwise.[7]
