Description :

• Subshrubs or shrubs, rarely perennial herbs, hairy or sometimes glutinous
• Leaves alternate, dentate to serrate or entire, sessile or subsessile, not decurrent
• Capitula disciform, mostly in leafless, terminal, corymbose cymes, rarely few or solitary; flowers white, yellow or purplish
• Involucre ovoid, broadly campanulate or subhemispherical; bracts in few to many rows
• Receptacle concave or convex, sometimes honeycombed, epaleate
• Marginal florets female, filiform, 3-lobed, in 1 to few rows
• Style entire or almost undivided or sometimes divided; style branches with obtuse sweeping hairs reaching below the furcation
• Disc florets functionally male; corolla tubular, widening upwards, glabrous, with 5 lobes, glandular on margins
• Anthers calcarate and caudate; endothecial tissue radial
• Cypselas cylindric, hairy, without resin ducts
• Pappus of free, barbellate, capillary bristles in 1 row, each bristle with patent teeth
• x = 10 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Pluchea Cass.
  • Cassini: 31 (1817)
  • Wild: 132 (1969)
  • Hilliard: 116 (1977)
  • Anderberg: 164 (1991)
  • Anderberg: 301 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 80, Asia, America, Africa and Australia
• Southern Africa : Species 4, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal