Description :

• Shrubs or subshrubs, glabrous or pubescent
• Leaves alternate, small, linear or subterete, sometimes appressed, entire or lobed; often with secondary shoots in axils of primary leaves
• Capitula radiate or rarely discoid, few-flowered, solitary at apex of branches or laxly corymbose, pedunculate or rarely sessile
• Involucre campanulate to subglobose; bracts in 4 or 5 rows, sometimes with membranous tip, ciliate, glabrous, sometimes glandular on back
• Receptacle flat or slightly convex, epaleate
• Ray florets female, fertile; corolla white or yellow; tube with oblong or elliptic, minutely 3-toothed lamina, 3-4 times longer than tube, glandular
• Disc florets bisexual, fertile; corolla tube short with distinct campanulate, partly enervate, 5-lobed limb
• Anthers ecalcarate and ecaudate; with oblong or lanceolate, apical appendage
• Style terete, sometimes swollen at base, with linear, truncate branches
• Cypselas ellipsoid-obovoid to terete, with 10-18 rounded ribs, minutely papillose, apically with entire or toothed thickened rim, rarely developing into small crown
• Pappus 0

Nomenclature:

• Phymaspermum Less.
  • Lessing: 253 (1832)
  • Harvey: 160 (1865)
  • Källersjö: 535 (1985)
  • Bremer & Humphries: 94 (1993)
  • Bremer: 451 (1994)
• Adenachaena DC.
  • Candolle: 49 (1838)
  • Harvey: 160 (1865).
• Brachymeris DC.
  • Candolle: 76 (1838)
  • Harvey: 163 (1865).
• Iocaste E.Mey. ex Harv.
  • Harvey: 160 (1865)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 19, Zimbabwe and southern Africa
• Southern Africa : Widespread but absent from Botswana and Northern Cape