Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs or small subshrubs, branched, thickly hairy
• Leaves alternate or sometimes lower ones opposite, entire or toothed, linear to oblanceolate or spathulate, subsessile, both sides strigillose or canescent
• Capitula radiate, disciform or discoid, solitary, on axillary or terminal, rarely bracteate peduncles
• Involucre hemispherical to campanulate; bracts imbricate, in 2-7 rows, with membranous margins, tomentose or pilose
• Receptacle with linear or linear-lanceolate or club-shaped paleae, or epaleate
• Ray florets sometimes reduced or 0, female, in 1 row; corolla blue, purple or white; tube cylindric, glandular below, produced into oblong, 3-toothed lamina
• Style with 2 long branches
• Staminodia sometimes present
• Disc florets bisexual and fertile; corolla yellow or white, sometimes flushed reddish purple; tube cylindric below, expanded above or tube expanded from base, 5-lobed, laxly glandular
• Style branches with narrowly to broadly triangular appendages
• Anthers ecalcarate and ecaudate, with long triangular, apical appendage
• Cypselas obovate, with 2 or more marginal veins, light brown, greyish white or white, hairy; cypselas of ray florets often glabrescent and hairy only on margins
• Pappus almost always consisting of a row of caducous, barbellate bristles and a row of persistent scales
• x = 8 (6, 9)

Nomenclature:

• Amellus L.
  • Linnaeus: 1225 (1759)
  • Harvey: 61 (1865)
  • Merxmüller: 20 (1967)
  • Rommel: 584 (1977)
  • Bremer: 410 (1994)
• Susanna E.Phillips
  • Phillips: 17 (1950)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 12, Namibia, Botswana, Free State, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape