Description:

• Shrubs, often scandent or twining
• Leaves alternate, entire or toothed, petiolate or subsessile, lanceolate or deltoid, glabrous to thinly hairy, sometimes glandular
• Capitula radiate, corymbose-paniculate, terminal; peduncles sometimes bracteate
• Involucre campanulate; bracts in 3 or 4 rows
• Receptacle flat, epaleate, honeycombed, with rim of pits slightly or distinctly produced
• Ray florets female; corolla blue or white; tube cylindric, extending into 3-fid lamina
• Disc florets bisexual and fertile or functionally male; corolla yellow, tubular below, widening above, 3-5-lobed
• Anthers ecalcarate and ecaudate; with lanceolate, apical appendage
• Style branches of ray florets linear; of disc florets oblong, tips deltoid, minutely papillose outside and with few sweeping hairs
• Cypselas elliptic or obovate, somewhat compressed, ribbed, glabrous or thinly pubescent
• Pappus of caducous scabrid bristles in 1 row
• x = 9 (7, 10) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Microglossa DC.
  • Candolle: 320 (1836)
  • Grau: 399 (1976)
  • Hilliard: 78 (1977)
  • Bremer: 425 (1994)
• Nidorella Cass. in part
  • Harvey: 87 (1865)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 10; tropical and southern Africa, Madagascar and Asia
• Southern Africa: Species 2: Microglossa caffrorum (Less.) Grau and M. mespilifolia (Less.) B.L.Robinson, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape