Richardia grandiflora

Richardia grandiflora is a low, prostrate to ascending perennial herb in the Rubiaceae family, native to South America and naturalised in parts of North America and the Caribbean. Stems are slender, branching, often rooting at the lower nodes, and densely covered with short coarse hairs. Leaves are opposite, simple, elliptic to lanceolate, 2 to 5 centimetres long, with entire margins and a pair of small stipules joined to the petiole bases by a fringed sheath that is characteristic of the family. Showy flowers are crowded into compact terminal heads subtended by a leafy involucre of four to six bracts; individual flowers have a tubular corolla 8 to 12 millimetres long opening into five or six pale pink to lavender lobes, with a white throat. The fruit is a small dry schizocarp splitting into hairy mericarps. The species favours open, disturbed, sandy ground and lawns.