Description:

• Perennial herbs up to 1 m tall
• Leaves alternate, sometimes radical, simple, broadly linear or pinnatisect, sessile or petiolate, decurrent
• Capitula discoid, in panicled corymbs, several-flowered
• Involucre campanulate; bracts in 2 or 3 rows, inner ones obovate to broadly elliptic, usually membranous
• Receptacle flat, honeycombed, epaleate
• Florets bisexual; corolla yellow; tube narrowly cylindric below, becoming campanulate above, 5-lobed
• Anthers ecalcarate and ecaudate; with lanceolate, apical appendage
• Style branches oblong, truncate and penicillate with deltoid appendage, with conspicuous sweeping hairs
• Cypselas elliptic to obovate in outline, somewhat oblique, slightly compressed, usually 3-ribbed, pubescent
• Pappus in 2 rows, of many fine scabrid bristles, caducous

Nomenclature:

• Heteromma Benth.
  • Bentham: 286 (1873)
  • Hilliard & Burtt: 364 (1973)
  • Hilliard: 100 (1977)
  • Bremer: 422 (1994)
• Chrysocoma subgenus Heteropsis Harv.
  • Harvey: 95 (1865).
• Pentheriella O.Hoffm. & Muschl.
  • Hoffmann & Muschler: 316 (1910)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 3, endemic, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Lesotho and Eastern Cape