Description :

• Trees or shrubs, dioecious, often aromatic
• Leaves alternate, petiolate or subsessile, persistently tomentose or lanate beneath, entire to coarsely irregularly serrate or 3-lobed towards apex
• Synflorescences in terminal or axillary panicles, the whole usually tomentose-lanate
• Capitula discoid; florets yellowish
• Involucre subcylindric, broadly campanulate or subglobose; bracts in 1 or 2 rows
• Receptacle flat or somewhat convex, honeycombed, epaleate, usually with long, silky hairs
• Male capitula with corolla tubular or funnel-shaped, villous or lanate outside, lobes 5, recurved; anthers calcarate and caudate, apical appendage long, flat; endothecial tissue polarised; style narrowly terete, simple or minutely bifid; ovary abortive
• Pappus 0
• Female capitula with corolla shorter than ovary, villous or lanate outside, 4- or 5-lobed; style branches short, flat, ovate; cypselas ± flattened, obovoid or ellipsoid, densely lanate
• Pappus 0

Nomenclature:

• Tarchonanthus L.
  • Linnaeus: 842 (1753)
  • Harvey: 117 (1865)
  • Paiva: 355 (1972)
  • Hilliard: 110 (1977)
  • Pope: 9 (1992)
  • Bremer: 105 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 2, Africa
• Southern Africa : ; Species 2: Tarchonanthus camphoratus L. and T. trilobus DC., widespread