Description:

• Perennial or rarely annual herbs, usually tufted from base, with milky latex
• Leaves alternate sometimes rosulate, rarely with distinct petiole, entire to pinnately lobed, usually white-woolly on lower surface
• Capitula radiate, few- to many-flowered, solitary, pedunculate
• Involucre urceolate or campanulate; bracts in many rows, connate below to form cup and intrusive at base
• Receptacle somewhat convex or conical, epaleate
• Ray florets in 1 row, neuter; corolla yellow, golden or reddish, often with greenish or blackish spot at base, strap-shaped, tube flatttened, with ± oblong-elliptic, 3- or 4-toothed lamina, 2-3-times longer than tube; staminodes sometimes present
• Disc florets bisexual, fertile or inner sterile; corolla concolorous with ray florets, tubular, widened above, deeply 5-lobed
• Anthers with bases sagittate, shortly mucronate-acuminate
• Style terete, thickened above, with ± linear-lanceolate branches; styles of inner, sterile florets usually undivided
• Cypselas obovoid-obconical, with rows of swollen cells, sericeous
• Pappus of many, delicate, slender scales, sometimes difficult to distinguish from cypsela hairs
• x = 5, 6, 7 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Gazania Gaertn.
  • Gaertner: 451 (1791)
  • Harvey: 471 (1865)
  • Oliver & Hiern: 427 (1877)
  • Phillips: 845 (1951)
  • Roessler: 365 (1959)
  • Hilliard: 543 (1977)
  • Bremer: 261 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 17, Africa; mainly in southern Africa with Gazania krebsiana Less. subsp. serrulata (DC.) Roessler extending to Angola and Tanzania, and G. rigens (L.) Gaertn. var. uniflora (L.f.) Roessler also occurring in Mozambique
• Southern Africa: Namibia and South Africa