At dusk, Metalasias glow like candles and smell like sweet honey.

Perfectly designed flower heads hold tiny floret groups together. Each floret is set in creamy coloured papery bracts. The leaves are needle like, crooked and curved to catch every possible molecule of moisture.

If you step back, you’ll see that the whole shrub resembles a single flower head.

Metalasia densa below:

Further back behind the first dune, Metalasia muricata grows. It forms smaller rounder bushes of upto 1.5m tall. Its leaves are more twisty and flower heads more dense. The florets sit inside brown papery bracts. Before the first cold, the bracts pop open and small florets show their faces. I was surprised that these actually bear fruit. Attached to each fruit long bristles known as the pappus grows. This pappus flies the seed on the currents of the wind.

By the end of winter, the ‘wit blombos’ stand dishevelled until every last seed is dispersed.