Description :

• Annual or perennial herbs, sometimes robust, often with woody rootstock, rarely somewhat suffruticose, usually hairy
• Leaves opposite, often radical, simple to variably cut or dissected
• Flowers aggregated into pedunculate, rarely sessile, heads; individual flowers or florets subtended by a bract or involucre which is ribbed and expanded into a saucer-shaped, membranous structure
• Calyx of 5 awns almost as long as corolla
• Corolla sub-bilabiate, pilose, 4- or 5-lobed; tube narrowly funnel-shaped, pilose within; lobes oblong, shorter than tube
• Stamens 4, inserted in upper part of corolla tube, exserted; filaments linear, longer than anthers; anthers linear-oblong
• Ovary : style linear, shortly exserted; stigma subcapitate, grooved, rarely shortly 2-lobed
• Fruit as for family
• x = 8, 9 (aneuploids, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• Scabiosa L.
  • Linnaeus: 98 (1753)
  • Sonder: 43 (1865)
  • Heine: 1 (1968)
  • Cannon & Cannon: 81 (1983)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 100, Europe, Africa and to Asia
• Southern Africa : Species 9, all regions