Description :

• Herbs, subshrubs or shrubs; latex sometimes present
• Leaves alternate, rosulate, rarely opposite, entire or frequently dentate-pinnatisect to lobed, often spiny or spinulose or unarmed
• Capitula generally radiate or discoid, rarely disciform; solitary or corymbose, rarely in racemiform synflorescences or aggregated to secondary heads
• Involucral bracts imbricate in several rows, often with scarious appendages or spine-tipped; free or ± connate
• Receptacle areolate-alveolate, sometimes deeply alveolate with enclosed cypselas, rarely almost smooth, naked or often with denticulate to bristly pit margins
• Ray florets female, fertile, sterile or neuter, often with staminodes; with long radiate and yellow or variously coloured lamina, apically 3- or 4-lobed
• Disc florets bisexual or sometimes functionally male, regular and rather shallowly to deeply 5-lobed; yellow or sometimes variously dark-coloured, frequently with stalked glands
• Anthers calcarate, mostly ecaudate or shortly caudate; apical appendage elongate and obtuse-rounded to broadly ovate-triangular and distinctly demarcated from thecae; endothecial tissue polarised or radial; filaments smooth or rarely papillose
• Style slender or with much thickened apical part, bilobed or with short to long style branches, mostly with ring of longer hairs beneath style branches or at base of apical part; hairs acute
• Cypselas ellipsoid-oblong to obovoid-obconical, frequently distinctly ribbed, often sericeous-villous with twin hairs or glabrous
• Pappus of scales or 0

Nomenclature:

• Arctoteae
  • Cassini: 159 (1819)
  • Pope: 229 (1992)
  • Bremer: 256 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Genera 16, Africa, mainly southern Africa, also in SW Asia and Australia
• Southern Africa : Genera 14, species 198

References:

• BREMER, K. 1994. Asteraceae , cladistics & classification . Timber Press, Portland, Oregon
• CASSINI, A.H.G. DE. 1819. In Journal de physique, de chimie, d'histoire naturelle et des artes 88
• DYER, R.A. 1975. The genera of southern African flowering plants , Vol. 1. Botanical Research Institute, Pretoria
• HILLIARD, O.M. 1977. Compositae in Natal . University of Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg
• POPE, G.V. 1992. 97. Compositae . Flora zambesiaca 6,1

Resources:

• Key to Asteraceae tribes
• Key to Arctoteae genera

• Arctoteae genera: