Description :

• Annual or perennial herbs or subshrubs
• Leaves alternate, petiolate or subsessile, pubescent to glabrescent, sometimes glandular or gland-dotted, margin serrate
• Capitula discoid, solitary, terminal or lateral to many, aggregated in paniculate to corymbose groups
• Involucre broadly campanulate or cup-shaped
• Involucral bracts in many rows, apically appendaged, slightly pubescent to woolly tomentose; appendages white or variously coloured
• Receptacle epaleate
• Disc florets bisexual; corolla whitish or purple, with long slender basal tube, abruptly expanded cylindrical limb and short erect lobes; veins forming arch at corolla lobe without median trace; lobes pubescent, also hairs at throats of limbs and tubes
• Anthers calcarate, ecaudate; apical appendage flat, ovate, with blunt or acute tips; endothecial tissue polarised; filament collar cylindrical, sometimes slightly dilated distally
• Style bifid; branches apically tapering, long-exserted, with distinct stigmatic areas throughout inner portions, outsides covered with unicellular hairs down to upper portion of shaft; style base enclosed by long and cylindrical nectary
• Cypselas homomorphic, brown to dark brown, cylindrical, turbinate or elongated, 8-20-costate, pubescent or glabrous, with or without twin hairs, with or without glands, with or without carpopodium (fruit stalk); ovary crystals narrowly elongate, hexagonal, sometimes large
• Pappus bristles in many rows, sometimes with outer row of small scales, inner capillary ones flat or widened towards apex, caducous or persistent, barbellate on margins, sometimes connate to form annulus

Nomenclature:

• Baccharoides Moench
  • Moench: 578 (1794)
  • Robinson: 249 (1990)
  • Isawumi: 311 (1993)
  • Bremer: 217 (1994)
  • Isawumi et al.: 218 (1996)
• Vernonia subsect. Stengelia Sch.Bip. ex Walp
  • Walpers.: 946 (1843).
• Vernonia sect. Stengelia (Sch.Bip. ex Walp.) Benth.
  • Bentham: 127 (1873).
• Stengelia Steetz
  • Steetz: 360 (1864)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 30, tropical Africa and India
• Southern Africa : Species 2: Baccharoides adoensis (Sch.Bip. ex Walp.) H.Robinson and B. anthelmintica (L.) Moench, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland and KwaZulu-Natal