Description:

• Shrublets, usually woolly
• Leaves alternate, linear to elliptic, sessile, usually crowded and with revolute, entire margins and pungent apex, tomentose (hair type B)
• Capitula disciform, aggregated in dense corymbs at end of long peduncles (corymbophore), rarely sessile
• Involucre ± ellipsoid; bracts in 4-6 rows, outer pilose or hairy at base; inner with white or reddish, petaloid appendage; stereome undivided
• Receptacle epaleate, flat or somewhat convex, smooth
• Female florets few; corolla purple, tubular or filiform, sparsely glandular, 5-toothed
• Disc florets functionally male, outnumbering female florets; corolla purple, tubular below, narrowly campanulate above, with 5 short, ovate lobes
• Anthers ecalcarate, caudate, with short tails, with ovate, apical appendage; endothecial tissue polarised
• Style branches flattened, linear, truncate with obtuse sweeping hairs apically
• Cypselas narrowly oblong to narrowly elliptic to narrowly ovate, glabrous or pubescent with elongated, nonmyxogenic twin hairs (glandular hairs present in some species)
• Pappus barbellate to subplumose, free at base or basally fused into annulus, reduced in female florets

Nomenclature:

• Anaxeton Gaertn.
  • Gaertner: 406 (1791)
  • Harvey: 289 (1865)
  • Lundgren: 22 (1972)
  • Anderberg: 92 (1991)
  • Anderberg: 335 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 10, endemic, Western Cape