Description:

• Perennial, woody, much branched, wiry shrubs or dwarfshrubs, erect or decumbent, Amphiglossa callunoides DC. stoloniferous and A. corrudifolia DC. rhizomatous
• Branches glabrous or with a thin layer of arachnoid hairs, tips spinescent in A. triflora DC
• Leaves small, ericoid, imbricate or widely spaced, in fascicles in some species, sessile or inconspicuously stalked, involute, abaxial surface arachnoid or glabrous, adaxial surface woolly, margins smooth, tips mucronate, acute or rounded
• Capitula radiate or discoid, terminal, sessile, solitary or in small groups, 3-12-flowered
• Involucral bracts in several rows; outermost chaffy or foliaceous; innermost chaffy, longer and narrower than outermost
• Receptacle a small disc, nude or with small extensions around cypsela bases
• Ray florets present in some species, white or pink, female, as long as wide or strap-shaped, to 3.5 mm long, 1.8 mm wide
• Disc florets white or pink, tubular, bisexual, 5-lobed
• Anthers apically acuminate, basally tailed
• Style bifid, stigmatic area in two strips along margins of style branches, inflated cells at branch tips short, rounded
• Nectary a small disk between style base and cypsela, present in all flowers
• Cypselas small, asymmetrical, glabrous, papillate
• Pappus bristles 18-32, densely plumose from tip to base, in one row, free (or fused only at very base in A. celans Koekemoer)

Nomenclature:

• Amphiglossa DC.
  • Candolle: 258 (1838)
  • Harvey: 275 (1865)
  • Bentham: 324 (1873)
  • Anderberg: 78 (1991)
  • Anderberg: 330 (1994)
  • Koekemoer: 65 (1999)
• Pterothrix DC.
  • Candolle: 279 (1838)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 11, endemic: Amphiglossa triflora DC. widespread in Namibia, North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Free State, Lesotho, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape; Amphiglossa tomentosa (Thunb.) Harv. in Namibia, Northern and Western Cape; the other species have localised distributions in Namibia, North-West, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape