Description:

• Shrubs or small trees
• Leaves alternate, imbricate, oblong, oblong-elliptic, oval, or rhombic, entire, with a thickened apical callus or several apical teeth, pubescent or silvery-sericeous
• Inflorescence an aggregation of sessile, axillary capitula; capitula 3-16-flowered, surrounded by an involucre of small, oblong to lanceolate bracts; bracts woody or much enlarged, brightly coloured, fleshy to papyraceous
• Flowers bisexual, regular
• Perianth cylindric in bud; tube very short, cylindric or bulbous, usually glabrescent; claws filiform, pubescent; limbs linear, acute, glabrescent or pubescent
• Anthers linear, acute, arising from base of perianth limb
• Ovary slender, pubescent, with 1 ovule; style terete, curved while elongating, but straight after anthesis; pollen presenter linear, acute to acuminate, or with a cylindric, ovoid-capitate or conic-capitate apex, usually geniculate or annulate at junction with style
• Hypogynous scales 4, obtuse or linear-filiform
• Fruit an ovoid or cylindric achene, broadly or narrowly introrse at base, glabrous to minutely puberulous
• x = 12 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Mimetes Salisb.
  • Salisbury: t. 66 (1807)
  • Stapf et al.: 643 (1912)
  • Rourke & Lincoln: 1 (1982)
  • Rourke: 171 (1984)
  • Rourke: 636 (1988)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 13, Western Cape: Porterville to the Kouga Mountains