Description :

• Shrublets or shrubs, often viscid, rarely spiny, rarely with decumbent branches rooting at nodes
• Leaves mostly opposite or alternate, sometimes fascicled, entire or ciliate-serrulate, sometimes coriaceous or succulent, woolly-tomentose, papillose or glabrous, rarely warted
• Capitula discoid, solitary or corymbose, 1-many-flowered
• Involucre campanulate to cylindric or ovoid; bracts in 4-10 rows, inner progressively longer, with membranous, glabrous or ciliate margins, sometimes acuminate or spine-tipped
• Receptacle convex to concave, often honeycombed, margins setose or lacerate
• Florets bisexual
• Corolla yellow, rarely purple or greenish; tube usually widening above, often chartaceous; lobes 5, triangular, oblong-linear to obovate
• Anthers linear, obtuse at base; usually with lanceolate, membranous, apical appendage
• Style terete; branches usually lanceolate, flattened, with short or long appendages, apex hairy
• Cypselas obovoid or turbinate or ± compressed, sometimes narrowed into short apical beak, glabrous to villous
• Pappus usually in 2 rows, of scabrid, barbellate or subpilose bristles, often connate at base, mostly straw-coloured, rarely purple

Nomenclature:

• Pteronia L.
  • Linnaeus: 1176 (1763)
  • Harvey: 95 (1865)
  • Hutchinson & Phillips: 277 (1917)
  • Bremer: 408 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 70, mainly southern Africa, few extending into Zimbabwe and Australia
• Southern Africa : Namibia, Botswana, Free State, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape