Description :

• Subshrubs or shrublets, sometimes tomentose, aromatic, camphor-scented
• Leaves usually alternate, sessile, narrow, sometimes reflexed, sometimes toothed or rigidly ciliate
• Capitula radiate, few- to many-flowered, solitary, terminal or few in corymb
• Involucre campanulate; bracts in 2-4 rows, imbricate, subequal, laterally and apically purplish, usually fimbriate, serrate, dentate or entire
• Receptacle flat to conical, paleate; paleae as long as disc florets and somewhat enclosing them, linear to lanceolate, sometimes fimbriate, membranous
• Ray florets neuter or female, fertile or sterile; corolla white, with ± cylindrical widening tube; lamina entire or bifid, longer than tube
• Disc florets bisexual, sometimes sterile; corolla yellow, tubular, gradually widening upwards, lobes 5, ovate-triangular, thickened at apex
• Anthers linear with sterile, flat, ovate to oblong, rounded to truncate, apical appendage; tails flat, subulate, ± connate in pairs
• Style terete, bifid, with swollen base; branches semiterete, linear to oblong, penicillate; stylopodium present or 0
• Cypselas glabrous, dotted all over with resin grains, brown, oblong to elliptic to obovate, somewhat 3- or 4-edged
• Pappus , if present, crown-like, light brown, of scarious, subulate to triangular scales

Nomenclature:

• Osmitopsis Cass. emended K.Bremer
  • Cassini: 154 (1817)
  • Harvey: 305 (1865)
  • Phillips: 811 (1951)
  • Bremer: 22 (1972)
  • Bremer: 471 (1994)
• Osmites L.
  • Linnaeus: 24 (1760).
• Bellidiastrum Less.
  • Lessing: 383 (1832)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 9, endemic, occurring in Eastern and Western Cape