Description:

• Shrublets or somewhat woody annuals, greyish-woolly to almost glabrous
• Leaves alternate, slender, usually mucronate
• Capitula radiate, many-flowered, solitary, on long peduncles or sometimes corymbose
• Involucre campanulate; bracts in 4-7 rows, ± oblong, sometimes with dark margins, usually chartaceous and glandular
• Receptacle nude or sometimes fimbriate
• Ray florets female, cylindric, with minutely 3-toothed lamina ± as long as tube; ovary linear, glabrous or pilose
• Style slender with linear, obtuse branches
• Pappus of narrow, membranous paleae
• Disc florets bisexual, fertile, rarely some sterile, corolla tube glandular, with 5 lanceolate lobes
• Anthers tailed, with an oblong, apical appendage
• Ovary linear
• Style linear, with linear, truncate branches, penicillate at apex
• Pappus double, of membranous paleae and 4 or 5 plumose bristles ± as long as corolla
• x = 7, 8, 17 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Leysera L.
  • Linnaeus: 1249 (1763)
  • Harvey: 293 (1865)
  • Bremer: 369 (1978)
  • Anderberg: 67 (1991)
  • Anderberg: 332 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 3, mainly in southern Africa, 1 in North Africa, Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East
• Southern Africa: Leysera gnaphalodes (L.) L. and L. tenella DC., Namibia, Free State, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape