Thank you to Douglas Justice for today's write-up.
Another wonderful photograph by Alan Tracey from his recent peregrinations in the southern Andes. Nassauvia Comm. ex Juss. is a southern south American endemic genus of about 50 shrubs and herbs, allied to the genus Mutisia (the climbing daisies). Local peoples refer to plants of the genus as repollito, meaning little cabbage sprout. The individual species of Nassauvia are differentiated in part by, and notable for, the degree of reduction displayed by flowers, inflorescences, leaves and stems. In the genus, the higher the elevation and more extreme the conditions, the more reduced (compact) are the plants. This is a general rule in alpines; however, as you can see from the image here, these are not typical looking "compact" alpine plants. The vocabulary describing this reduction series is somewhat arcane, but for the adventurous, this link opens to the abstract of "A typological analysis of the inflorescences of the genus Nassauvia (Asteraceae)" (the full article is unfortunately unavailable to most viewers).
The genus name honours Charles Orthon, Prince de Nassau-Siegen (1745-1809), who accompanied Louis Antoine Bougainville on the first official French circumnavigation of the globe (1766 to 1769). Bougainville had been charged with officially handing over the Falkland Islands to the Spanish. This is probably the connection with the plants we know as Nassauvia, as at least one species is found in the Falklands. The epithet commemorates the Spanish botanist Marianio La Gasca y Segura (1776 to 1839).