Ursinia is a genus of about 40 species of annuals, herbaceous perennials and subshrubs in the family Asteraceae, native to South Africa.
Ursinia is popular for its daisy-like, showy flowers that bloom all season long. These flowers attract bees, as well as other beneficial insects. This is one of the easiest plants to grow and is ideal for beginner gardeners.
The name is given in honor of Johannes Heinrich Ursinus (1608–1667), a botanist from Germany who was the author of Arboretum Biblicum.
Ursinia symbolizes artifice, temptation and trickery.
These flowers have evolved ways of taking advantage of physics to attract pollinators and ensure their reproductive success. They are very deceptive, but appear to offer rewards to their pollinators.
On the other side, their delicate petals represent innocent love that has not yet blossomed into passion.
Recent research shows that some plants (including Ursinias) use a trick of physics, an optical effect to attract the pollinators such as bees.
The bees have a preference to the color blue, but it’s hard for plants to make that color in their petals so they create ethereal halos of blue light around their petals which are invisible to humans, but visible to bees. In other words, the plants are using disorder to generate a specific color in order to attract pollinators, which is an interesting fact from an evolutionary point of view.
