All species have leathery, entire or toothed leaves in rosettes, directly from the underground rootstock, and one or few flower heads sit at the top of the stems that carry few bracts.

[3] Mairia consists of species which store their reserves in their succulent brown underground roots (so-called geophytes).

[2] From the rootstock also develop one or few initially woolly hairy, mostly dark reddish inflorescence stems (or scapes) with one to eight small bracts.

Their corollas consist of a short tube at the base topped by a long, flat, ribbon-like ligule with four or sometimes up to seven veins.

[2] The pale to dark brown, one-seeded, dry, indehiscent fruits (or cypselae) of both ray and disc florets are cylinder-shaped or somewhat flattened, carry apparently two, or four to seven narrow, mostly contrasting ribs, and are covered by shiny, yellow glands and deeply divided, silvery or golden twin hairs on a further unadorned surface.

They carry at their tip the modified calyx called pappus that is yellowish white, persistent, and arranged in two whorls.

[2] The earliest known description of a species of fire daisy was by Carl Peter Thunberg, a Swedish naturalist who is sometimes referred to as "the father of South African botany".

William Henry Harvey in 1865 wrongly spelled the name as Mairea and extended the number of species to ten.

Later two newly distinguished taxa were included in the genus, and one species, M. burchellii that was originally described by De Candolle, but had been reassigned to Zyrphelis by Harvey, was reinstated in Mairia by Ulrike Zinnecker-Wiegand in 1990.

[8] tribes Anthemideae, Calenduleae, Gnaphalieae Printzia Denekia Nannoglottis Mairia Chiliophyllum, Lepidophyllum, Llerasia, Nardophyllum, Novenia, Oritrophium Celmisia, Damnamenia, Olearia, Pachystegia, Pleurophyllum Pteronia Commidendrum, Melanodendron Amellus, Chrysocoma, Felicia, Poeciliopsis, Polyarrhena, Zyrphelis all other Astereae The species that were originally described as, or moved to Mairia, which since have been reassigned include the following:[9] The six species of fire daisy are endemic to the southern mountains of the Western Cape province and the western end of the Eastern Cape province of South Africa.

M. burchellii occurs from Piketberg and Ceres in the north, to the southern Cape Peninsula and the Hottentots Holland Mountains in the south, and eastwards to Bredasdorp.

M. hirsuta has a rather limited distribution from near Swellendam to Suurbraak in the Langeberg, and in the isolated range of Warmwaterberg in the Little Karoo to the north.