Description :

• Shrubs or shrublets, cano-pubescent, glandular or glabrous
• Leaves mostly alternate, rarely opposite, variously pinnatisect, occasionally entire or apically dentate, ± ericoid
• Capitula discoid, solitary or corymbose, pedunculate, several-flowered
• Involucre globose; bracts in 3-5 rows, obtuse and with scarious margin
• Receptacle flat, convex or hemispherical to conical, epaleate
• Disc florets bisexual, fertile; corolla glandular; tube generally swollen, cylindrical, limb cyathiform-campanulate, with 5 ovate lobes
• Anthers ecalcarate and ecaudate; with ovate to linear, apical appendage
• Style terete, sometimes swollen at base; with linear, truncate branches
• Cypselas yellowish brown, 5-ribbed, ± terete, often with large 2-celled glands and with myxogenic cells abaxially and on ribs
• Pappus an adaxial auricle, or an oblique adaxially longer cup or of free adaxially whitish scales, sometimes 0
• x = 6, 7, 8

Nomenclature:

• Pentzia Thunb.
  • Thunberg: 145 (1800)
  • Harvey: 171 (1865)
  • Hutchinson: 241 (1916)
  • Hilliard & Burtt: 328 (1973)
  • Källersjö: 302 (1988)
  • Bremer & Humphries: 151 (1993)
  • Bremer: 477 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 23, Africa
• Southern Africa : Species 21, widespread but absent from Mpumalanga, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal