Rafarafa

Elephantopus scaber, the prickly-leaved elephant's foot, is a tropical perennial herb of the family Asteraceae with a subscapose growth form, arising from a woody rootstock and long fibrous roots. A flattened basal rosette of oblanceolate to elliptic leaves, 6 to 60 centimetres long and 1.5 to 10 centimetres wide, has attenuate bases, finely toothed margins and rough, pilose surfaces. From the rosette rise one to several erect, hairy flowering stems 0.2 to 1.5 metres tall bearing smaller, lanceolate cauline leaves. The inflorescence consists of clustered glomerules of capitula, each about 1 to 3 centimetres across, arranged in terminal corymb-like cymes and subtended by leafy bracts; the small five-lobed corollas are pale mauve, lilac or white. Fruits are fusiform, ten-ribbed achenes about 3 to 4 millimetres long, crowned by a pappus of five to ten stiff scales. It is widely distributed across tropical Asia, Africa and the Americas, often as a weed of disturbed ground.