Description :

• Single or multi-stemmed, robust or weak shrubs or dwarf shrubs, up to 1.5 m tall, occasionally prostrate; branches densely or sparsely leafy, tomentose or glaucous
• Leaves small, alternate, often ericoid and twisted, broadly cymbiform, linear or narrowly triangular, adaxial surface villous or tomentose, abaxial surface glabrous or covered in a matted layer of hairs, tips rounded mucronate or pungent, margins slightly or strongly involute
• Synflorescences tight, globose or cylindrical, terminal heads, or an open or dense plumose arrangement of capitula
• Capitula discoid, 1-flowered
• Involucral bracts in a few rows, innermost dry and membranous, outermost shorter, often leafy
• Receptacle stalk-like, epaleate
• Ray florets 0
• Disc florets bisexual, tubular, white, pink or wine-red, 5-lobed; lobes erect or spreading
• Anthers apically acuminate, basally tailed
• Style bifid, branches truncate, pencilled at tips
• Nectary a small disk between style and cypsela or 0
• Cypselas small, with or without a rim-like annulus, smooth or tomentose, trichomes short with tips rounded or longer, more flexible with tips acuminate
• Pappus of 10-26 capillary bristles, plumose in upper part, fused in a ring at base, rarely free, 0 in Stoebe montana and S. schultzii
• x = 8 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Stoebe L.
  • Linnaeus: 831 (1753)
  • Harvey: 279 (1865)
  • Levyns: 1 (1937)
  • Anderberg: 77 (1991)
  • Anderberg: 334 (1994)
• Eremanthis Cass.
  • Cassini: 64 (1827).
• Perotriche Cass.
  • Cassini: 75 (1818).
• Seriphium Less.
  • Lessing: 346 (1832)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 25, tropical and southern Africa and Madagascar
• Southern Africa : Species 20 in Northern, Western and Eastern Cape, Stoebe plumosa (L.) Thunb. widespread northwards to Namibia and Zimbabwe