Mairia

Mairia is a genus of perennial herbaceous plants assigned to the family Asteraceae. All species have leathery, entire or toothed leaves in rosettes, directly from the underground rootstock, and one or few flower heads sit at the top of the stems that carry few bracts. These have a whorl of white to mauve ray florets surrounding yellow disc florets in the centre. In general, flowering only occurs after the vegetation has burned down. The six species currently assigned to Mairia are endemic to the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa. Some of the species are called fire daisy in English and vuuraster in Afrikaans.

== Description == Mairia consists of species which store their reserves in their succulent brown underground roots (so-called geophytes). They have evergreen, broad to narrow, oval, elliptic or line-shaped, leathery, often more or less succulent leaves, narrowed at their base in to a leaf stalk that may be broadly winged, with an entire margin, slightly lobed, with few teeth or with regular rounded or pointy teeth. The leaves have one to five main veins, and the surface is very to lightly woolly or hairless, and may or may not carry glands. All leaves grow in a rosette directly from the woody rootstock in the ground.