Arctotheca populifolia

This plant is a perennial herb with thick, ribbed, decumbent stems growing in clumps up to 30 centimeters tall. The herbage is woolly, gray, and fleshy. The white-haired leaves have oval blades up to 6 centimeters long by 5 wide, with smooth or toothed edges. The inflorescence is borne on a woolly, erect peduncle up to 11 centimeters tall. The flower head is about 2 centimeters wide with yellow ray florets 5 to 7 millimeters long and yellow disc florets in the center. The fruit is a white-woolly cypsela about half a centimeter long. ==Ecology==

This plant is a pioneer species of sandy coastal habitat types, such as dunes. It is a main factor in the formation of dune hummocks, a dune type formed in its native South Africa when wind deposits sand around it and other newly established beach plants. The ability of the plant to colonize bare sand has helped it take hold on the Australian coastline. It was planted for beach stabilization in Western Australia until it became apparent that it was invasive. Native Spinifex grasses are now used for this purpose. The beach daisy is now a coastal weed of much of temperate Australia. It can also grow on basaltic soils, allowing it to move inland from beaches to grasslands. The seeds can also be transported in soil and plant waste. The seeds of the plant are a favored food item of the African hairy-footed gerbil (Gerbillurus paeba), which also eats T. capensis, the sand flea that lives in the dunes around the plant. ==References==