Description:

• Perennial herbs, acaulescent and scapigerous, often with woolly crown
• Leaves radical, entire, serrulate, dentate or sinuate-pinnatifid, pilose or tomentose or glabrescent
• Capitula radiate, solitary on long scapes; scapes 1-headed, many-flowered, bracteate or ebracteate
• Involucre turbinate to broadly campanulate; bracts in many rows, outer shorter than inner, obtuse
• Receptacle flat, epaleate
• Ray florets in 1 or 2 rows, usually female; corolla white, yellow, pink or red, bilabiate, outer lip strap-shaped or shortly elliptic, (2)3-denticulate, inner lip of 2 small, linear lobes
• Disc florets bisexual, fertile or inner functionally male, of same colour as ray florets, also bilabiate; outer lip ± elliptic, 3-toothed or occasionally 3-lobed; inner lip of (1)2 or 3 linear or oblong lobes, usually reflexed
• Anthers with bases sagittate, tailed, tails entire or ciliate; apical appendage lanceolate
• Style terete, with shortly and broadly lanceolate branches, tips rounded or subacute with short, pollen-sweeping hairs outside
• Cypselas narrowly flask-shaped, attenuated at apex or sometimes prolonged into beak, ribbed, sparsely puberulous
• Pappus of many scabrid bristles
• x = 12, 23, 25 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Gerbera L.
  • Linnaeus: 247 (1758) name conserved
  • Oliver & Hiern: 445 (1877)
  • Phillips: 851 (1951)
  • Wild: 202 (1972)
  • Hilliard: 586 (1977)
  • Hansen: 8 (1985)
  • Bremer: 100 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 30, tropical and southern Africa, Madagascar, Asia
• Southern Africa: Species 13, widespread but absent from Namibia and Botswana