Description :

• Perennial herbs, acaulescent, unbranched or with subterranean branches
• Leaves in rosettes, entire to pinnately lobed, sometimes spinescent, pustulate on upper surface, tomentose beneath
• Capitula discoid; crowded in large, sessile secondary head in centre of leaf rosette, each capitulum few-flowered
• Involucre subglobose; bracts in few to many rows, stiff and pungent or herbaceous and woolly
• Receptacle flat, paleate; paleae ± linear to filamentous
• Florets bisexual, fertile; corolla purple; tube widened above, glandular-hairy, with 5 linear lobes usually thickened at apex
• Anthers sagittate or tailed; with ovate to lanceolate, apical appendage
• Style linear below, terete above with a swelling between; branches short, oblong
• Cypselas oblong, faintly ribbed
• Pappus of scales in 1 or 2 rows

Nomenclature:

• Platycarpha Less.
  • Lessing: 688 (1831)
  • Harvey: 54 (1865)
  • Phillips: 848 (1951)
  • Bremer: 257 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 3, endemic, Namibia, Botswana, North-West, Gauteng, Free State, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape