Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs
• Leaves alternate, sessile, tomentose (hair type B), eglandular, margin flat, entire
• Capitula disciform, small, inconspicuous, in head-like clusters or in ± elongated spikes
• Involucral bracts papery, brownish, transparent; stereome undivided
• Receptacle flat, epaleate
• Female florets purple, filiform, pistillate, outnumbering disc florets
• Disc florets bisexual; corolla purple, corolla lobes erect
• Anthers ecalcarate, caudate with short tails; apical appendage flat, as wide as thecae; endothecial tissue polarised
• Style bifid; style branches truncate with obtuse sweeping hairs apically; stigmatic surface separated
• Cypselas small, oblong, with globose, myxogenic twin hairs; epidermis smooth
• Pappus of barbellate, capillary bristles in 1 row, deciduous as unit, basally connate; apical cells not clavate
• x = 10 (1 report, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Gamochaeta Wedd.
  • Weddell: 151 (1856)
  • Anderberg: 155 (1991)
  • Anderberg: 357 (1994)
• Gnaphalium L., in part, excl. type
  • Hilliard: 17 (1983)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 52, mainly South America, but also in other parts of the world
• Southern Africa: Species 5, naturalised, widespread but absent from Namibia, Botswana and Northern Cape