Description :

• Annual or perennial herbs, subshrubs or shrubs
• Leaves alternate or opposite, petiolate to sessile, entire or variously lobed, sometimes with auricles
• Capitula radiate, corymbose or solitary
• Involucre campanulate or turbinate; bracts imbricate or almost in 2 rows, seldom subequal and nearly in 1 row
• Ray florets female, fertile; corolla yellow to orange
• Cypselas 3-winged, with apical fenestrate airchamber, usually homomorphic, sometimes dimorphic with some wingless and rostrate
• Disc florets functionally male
• Anthers ecalcarate, caudate; endothecial tissue polarised
• Style bifid with apical ring of hairs
• Pappus 0
• x = 8

Nomenclature:

• Tripteris Less.
  • Lessing: 95 (1831)
  • Nordenstam: 376 (1994)
• Osteospermum subgen. Tripteris (Less.) Norl.
  • Nordlindh: 263 (1943)
  • Norlindh: 393 (1960)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 22, south and tropical Africa north to Egypt, Arabian Peninsula and Jordan
• Southern Africa : Species 20, widespread but absent from Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal