Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs or shrublets
• Leaves alternate, opposite, or in basal rosette, sometimes tufted, mostly entire, rarely toothed, often linear to lanceolate, pubescent or rarely glabrous
• Capitula radiate, rarely discoid, mostly solitary, terminal, pedunculate
• Involucre hemispherical to campanulate; bracts in 3 or 4 rows, imbricate, unequal or strictly in 2 rows, equal
• Receptacle flat, epaleate
• Ray florets female, fertile or rarely sterile, in 1 row, strap-shaped; corolla blue, mauve, pink or white, rarely yellow; 0 in 1 species
• Staminodes sometimes present
• Disc florets bisexual, fertile, rarely all inner ones functionally male, tubular, slightly dilated above, 5-lobed, yellow
• Anthers ecalcarate and ecaudate; apical appendage triangular
• Style branches narrowly oblong, apex with triangular appendage, with conspicuous pollen-sweeping hairs
• Cypselas compressed, obovate with thickened margins, mostly hairy, bright brown or black
• Pappus in 1 row, of persistent or caducous scabrid or barbellate bristles, rarely 0 in ray florets
• x = 9 (5, 6, 8) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Felicia Cass.
  • Cassini: 165 (1818) name conserved
  • Levyns: 768 (1950)
  • Merxmüller: 417 (1954)
  • Merxmüller: 66 (1967)
  • Grau: 255 (1973)
  • Hilliard: 68 (1977)
  • Bremer: 420 (1994)
• Aster L. in part
  • Harvey: 69 (1865)
  • Phillips: 782 (1951).
• Charieis Cass.
  • Cassini: 68 (1817)
  • Grau: 255 (1973), genus proposed for rejection

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 83, southern Africa to Nigeria, Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia
• Southern Africa: Species 78, widespread