Description:

• Erect or dwarf shrubs, somewhat ericoid, dense or lax, often glandular
• Leaves alternate, crowded, linear or linear-lanceolate, sessile, apex mucronate or with curved mucro, with revolute or thickened margins, glandular-hairy or woolly (hair type B)
• Capitula radiate, solitary, rarely clustered, terminal, sessile or pedunculate
• Involucre campanulate or turbinate; bracts in 5-7 rows, glandular or hairy on back; stereome undivided
• Receptacle flat, smooth or sometimes honeycombed, epaleate
• Ray florets female, in 1 row, deep yellow, fertile; corolla tubular below, with narrowly elliptic 3-toothed lamina
• Style branches linear, obtuse at apex; stigmatic papillae confined to marginal bands on inner faces and confluent at branch tips
• Disc florets bisexual, fertile or rarely functionally male; corolla deep yellow, glandular-hairy, cylindric below, abruptly campanulate or more gradually widened above, 5-lobed
• Anthers ecalcarate, caudate; with deltoid or oblong-obtuse apical appendage; endothecial tissue polarised
• Style branches (when fertile) oblong, slightly branched at obtuse tips, minute pollen-sweeping papillae on outer faces; stigmatic bands marginal on inner surfaces, not meeting at tip
• Cypselas cylindric or fusiform, 10-15-ribbed, glabrous or hairy
• Pappus if present, of acute scabrid bristles, caducous or persistent

Nomenclature:

• Macowania Oliv.
  • Oliver: 49, t. 1062 (1870)
  • Smith: 348 (1927)
  • Phillips: 802 (1951)
  • Henderson: 116 (1961)
  • Hilliard & Burtt: 260 (1976)
  • Anderberg: 51 (1991)
  • Anderberg: 325 (1994)
• Homochaete Benth.
  • Bentham: 9, t. 1110 (1876)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 12, Arabian Peninsula and Ethiopia
• Southern Africa: Species 10, Northern Province, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape