Description :

• Annual or perennial herbs or subshrubs
• Leaves alternate, entire or serrate to pinnatisect
• Capitula radiate, rarely discoid, many-flowered, pedunculate, solitary or laxly corymbose
• Involucre campanulate; bracts in 5-7 rows, free; outer usually with brown margin; inner or all with membranous margin, glabrous
• Receptacle flat or convex, honeycombed, paleate; paleae as long as and enveloping disc florets, sometimes narrow with apical limb
• Ray florets neuter, rarely female, fertile or sterile; corolla yellow, orange, white or rarely reddish, dorsally sometimes coppery; tube with ± linear-oblong, rounded or 2- or 3-toothed lamina 2.5-10 × longer than tube
• Disc florets bisexual, fertile, central florets female and sterile; corolla yellow, purplish or coppery; tube cylindric or funnel-shaped, with 5 lanceolate, sometimes appendaged lobes, sometimes with marginal glands
• Anthers ecalcarate and ecaudate; with ovate, apical appendage; endothecial tissue polarised
• Style terete, with linear, penicillate branches, papillose at apex
• Cypselas 5-ribbed, glabrous or with basal tuft of long hairs, glandular, erect or curved
• Pappus in 1 row, of 5-10 obovate or rounded, hyaline, sometimes fimbriate scales, which envelop one another; or in 2 rows, of 5 outer scales and 5 inner bristles; occasionally 0
• x = 8 (5, 7)

Nomenclature:

• Ursinia Gaertn.
  • Gaertner: 462, t. 174 (1791)
  • Harvey: 150 (1865)
  • Prassler: 363 (1967)
  • Bremer & Humphries: 93 (1993)
  • Bremer: 451 (1994)
• Sphenogyne R.Br.
  • Brown: 142 (1813)
  • Harvey: 137 (1865).
• Ursiniopsis E.Phillips
  • Phillips: 841 (1951)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 39, southern Africa and Ethiopia
• Southern Africa : Widespread but mostly Northern Cape (Namaqualand), Western and Eastern Cape