Description :

• Annual, biennial or perennial herbs
• Leaves alternate, sessile, lanceolate, linear-lanceolate or oblanceolate, sometimes decurrent, margins entire, flat or undulate, both surfaces woolly, or glandular above, woolly below (hair type B)
• Capitula disciform, in small clusters corymbosely or cymosely arranged
• Involucral bracts in 3 or 4 rows, inner ± equalling or slightly exceeding flowers, white to yellow, often buff or cream; stereome usually divided, rarely undivided ( P. oligandrum )
• Receptacle smooth or honeycombed, epaleate
• Florets few to many; female florets more than bisexual florets, corolla yellow, filiform or narrowly tubular; bisexual florets tubular, scarcely broadened above, yellow, 5-lobed; all florets glandular-hairy on backs of lobes
• Anthers ecalcarate, caudate, tails slightly longer or shorter than filament collar; with small, obtuse or subacute apical appendage; endothecial tissue polarised
• Style branches truncate and penicillate, with obtuse sweeping hairs
• Cypselas oblong, either glabrous or with duplex myxogenic hairs; epidermal cells tabular, often imbricate
• Pappus bristles scabrid, apical cells sometimes inflated, bases cohering by patent cilia
• x = 7 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Pseudognaphalium Kirp.
  • Kirpicznikov: 33 (1950)
  • Hilliard & Burtt: 204 (1981)
  • Hilliard: 53 (1983)
  • Anderberg: 146 (1991)
  • Anderberg: 362 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 90, Africa, Asia, Europe and America
• Southern Africa : Species 3, widespread