Description :

• Densely to moderately branched, compact to diffuse, sometimes spiny shrubs
• Stems prostrate to erect, glabrous or laxly tomentose, leafy and with lateral brachyblasts with crowded leaves
• Leaves decussate or sometimes alternate, laxly to densely set, semiamplexicaul, sessile, entire, midribbed, glabrous or tomentose, usually glandular with stalked glands
• Capitula radiate, solitary, sessile, terminal on stems and brachyblasts, often in fork of two branches
• Involucral bracts in 3-10 rows, imbricated, entire, basally firm, apically spreading and scarious and sometimes brown with pale margins, otherwise yellowish, glabrous or seldom dorsally tomentose, often glandular
• Receptacle flat, paleate or epaleate, sometimes shortly squamose
• Ray florets female, fertile, tube cylindrical-funnel-shaped, sometimes glandular, lamina spreading, elliptic, yellow and sometimes dorsally with a brownish purple stripe, usually 4-veined, apically minutely 3-lobed
• Style terete, bifid; branches spreading-revolute, semiterete, linear, glabrous or minutely penicillate apically, obtuse; stylopodium 0 or indistinct
• Disc florets bisexual; corolla yellow, 5-lobed; lobes spreading, ovate-triangular, marginally thickened, dorsally usually gland-dotted
• Style terete, bifid; branches spreading-revolute, semiterete, narrowly oblong, apically penicillate and truncate; stylopodium ± distinct, conical-terete
• Anthers linear, with a sterile, flat, ovate, apical appendage and sterile, subulate, entire or slightly branched tails; filaments filiform
• Cypselas terete or angular, ± narrowly oblong, glabrous or pilose, always more densely pilose in ray florets
• Pappus crown-like, scarious, of many ± connate scales, often also with 1-4 barbellate, apically slightly flattened bristles
• x = 7 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Rosenia Thunb. emended K.Bremer
  • Thunberg: 161 (1800)
  • Lessing: 369 (1832)
  • Candolle: 280 (1838)
  • Harvey: 294 (1865)
  • Bentham: 327 (1873)
  • Hoffmann: 198 (1890)
  • Bremer: 104 (1976)
  • Anderberg: 67 (1991)
  • Anderberg: 334 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa : Species 4, Namibia, Botswana, North-West, Free State, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape