Description :

• Perennial herbs, shrublets or shrubs, sometimes viscid, scabrid, or pilose
• Leaves alternate, pinnatifid or toothed, sometimes pungent, sessile
• Capitula radiate, solitary or corymbose, terminal, pedunculate
• Involucre hemispherical-campanulate with imbricate bracts in 2 or 3 rows, ovate to linear, usually ciliate, sometimes reflexed and sometimes pungent
• Receptacle convex, epaleate
• Ray florets female, fertile; corolla blue, purple, mauve, white or yellow; tube with linear or oblong, 3-toothed lamina up to 3 × its length
• Style linear, with linear, subacute branches
• Ray cypselas triquetrous or somewhat compressed with entire or crenate angles, glabrous
• Pappus 0
• Disc florets bisexual or functionally male; corolla yellow; tube subcampanulate above, with 5 lanceolate lobes, sometimes hairy on back
• Anthers ecalcarate, faintly eared at base; with ovate, apical appendage; endothecial tissue polarised
• Style terete or linear, deeply bifurcate with linear lobes, covered with acute papillae (hairs) to well below point of bifurcation
• Disc cypselas (develop in 1 species only) obovate or obcordate in outline, flattened, marginally winged with thickened rim, glabrous
• Pappus 0

Nomenclature:

• Garuleum Cass.
  • Cassini: 172 (1819)
  • Harvey: 92 (1865)
  • Norlindh: 33 (1943)
  • Nordenstam: 375 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 8, endemic, widespread but absent from Botswana, Northern Province, North-West and Swaziland