Description: Small erect compact shrubs; silky or silvery-hairy or occasionally glabrous, sometimes spinescent, aromatic.
Leaves alternate, opposite or clustered, mostly linear, small, simple or trifid, rarely glabrous.
Inflorescence racemose, umbellate or heads solitary; heads subglobose, becoming woolly in fruit, 7–20-flowered, stalked or sessile, ± globose; involucral bracts woolly, 2-seriate, outer bracts 4 or 5, broad-ovate often with membranous margins; inner bracts usually-cup shaped, 5-lobed. Ray florets female with a bifid style, mostly ligulate, the ligule broad-ovate, toothed or lobed, sometimes very small. Disc florets bisexual, sterile, campanulate above; corolla lobes 5, glabrous, ovate; stamens fertile; style simple, truncate, club-shaped.
Achenes of the ray florets flattened, wingless, pappus absent; achene of disc florets woolly.
Distribution and occurrence: World: c. 30 species, southern Africa. Australia: 1 species (naturalized).
Text by D. W. Hardin
Taxon concept:
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