Description :

• Perennial herbs or shrublets
• Leaves alternate, sessile, narrowly obovate-spathulate, narrowly elliptic or narrowly panduriform, margins entire, flat or revolute, densely tomentose to woolly (hair type B)
• Capitula disciform, small, aggregated into terminal cymes or corymbs, several-flowered, pedunculate, densely woolly
• Involucre ± obovoid; bracts in 4 rows, imbricate, stipitate, woolly, inner large, ovate, petaloid, white; stereome undivided
• Receptacle flat, paleate; paleae linear, ± as long as florets, outermost resembling involucral bracts
• Marginal florets female, few, filiform or narrowly tubular, minutely 5-toothed and glandular at apex
• Disc florets functionally male, outnumbering female florets; corolla tubular, narrowly campanulate above, 5-lobed and glandular at apex
• Anthers ecalcarate, caudate; with oblong-lanceolate, terminal appendage; endothecial tissue polarised
• Style in female flowers bifid; branches flattened, linear, obtuse-truncate and with obtuse sweeping hairs apically
• Cypselas narrowly elliptic, brownish, glabrous or with elongated, nonmyxogenic twin hairs, often subtended by short, scarious, apically laciniate scale
• Pappus in male flowers of 10-15 bristles in 1 row, as long as to slightly longer than corolla tube, sparsely barbellate to nude below and subplumose at apex, free below; in female flowers more poorly developed

Nomenclature:

• Petalacte D.Don
  • Don: 552 (1826)
  • Harvey: 288 (1865)
  • Lundgren: 119 (1974)
  • Anderberg: 92 (1991)
  • Anderberg: 339 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Monotypic: Petalacte coronata (L.) D.Don, endemic, Western Cape