Description :

• Herbs or often shrubs or shrublets
• Leaves alternate or opposite, sessile or petiolate; margin flat, involute or revolute, mostly entire with hairs of type B (hairs with 1 basal cell and a very long terminal cell)
• Capitula disciform or discoid, rarely radiate, solitary or in groups or forming secondary heads of various shapes
• Involucral bracts imbricate in several rows, papery, sometimes chartaceous or herbaceous; with white, pink, yellow or purple opaque papery lamina or brownish or hyaline, transparent; stereome generally undivided but characteristically divided (fenestrate) in some groups
• Receptacle generally flat to somewhat convex and epaleate, sometimes conical or peg-like; rarely paleate; squamose or fimbrilliferous
• Outer florets often 0, when present, filiform or radiate, rarely bilabiate, female, yellow or purple to white, sometimes blue, in 1 or several rows, fewer than or outnumbering central florets
• Central florets bisexual or often functionally male; corolla yellow or purple to blackish, corolla lobes erect or retrofract
• Anthers ecalcarate, caudate with short or long tails; apical appendage mostly ovate, sometimes oblong, rarely cordate, flat, sometimes concave and/or narrow
• Style usually with oblong-linear, truncate and apically penicillate style branches or sometimes obtuse with hairs dorsally or acute or prolonged; hairs obtuse; stigmatic areas in 2 separate lines
• Cypselas often small, generally oblong or obovoid, sometimes triquetrous, variously hairy with either elongated, short, clavate or globose twin hairs, myxogenic or not, sometimes glabrous (exceptionally glandular); epidermis smooth or rarely papillose
• Pappus of free or connate, plumose or barbellate, capillary bristles in 1 to several rows, rarely with scales and bristles or scales only, or 0; basally with or without patent cilia; apical cells acute or sometimes clavate; opaque or not

Nomenclature:

• Gnaphalieae
  • Lecoq & Juillet: 296 (1831)
  • Bentham: 452 (1866)
  • Anderberg: 59 (1991)
  • Anderberg: 320 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Genera 176, worldwide but particularly in southern Africa and Australia
• Southern Africa : Genera 56, species 533

References:

• ANDERBERG, A.A. 1991. Taxonomy and phylogeny of the tribe Gnaphalieae ( Asteraceae ). Opera Botanica 104
• ANDERBERG, A.A. 1994. Tribes Inuleae , Plucheeae , Gnaphalieae . In K. Bremer, Asteraceae , cladistics and classification . Timber Press, Portland, Oregon
• ANDERBERG, A.A. & BREMER, K. 1991. Parsimony analysis and cladistic reclassification of the Relhania generic group ( Asteraceae - Gnaphalieae ). Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden 78
• BENTHAM, G. 1866. Order LXII. Compositae . Flora Australiensis 3
• LECOQ, H. & JUILLET, J. 1831. In Dictionnaire raisonné des termes de botanique . Baillière, Paris
• NORDENSTAM, B. 1996. Anderbergia B.Nord., a new genus of everlastings ( Compositae - Gnaphalieae ) from the Cape Province. Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien 98B Suppl.

Resources:

• Key to Asteraceae tribes
• Key to Gnaphalieae genera

• Gnaphalieae genera: