Description:

• Pubescent annual herbs
• Leaves alternate, bipinnatisect
• Capitula discoid, disciform or radiate, solitary, pedunculate
• Involucre hemispherical or spherical; bracts in 3-5 rows, apically obtuse, with scarious margins, with or without central resin canal
• Receptacle flat to convex-conical, epaleate
• Ray florets, if present, female, fertile, white
• Cypselas white, adaxially ± flat or inconspicuously 3-ribbed, without or with very few myxogenic cells, but with 2 lateral rows of short-stalked glands, immersed in small cavities, abaxially rounded and covered with myxogenic cells; pericarp spongy, containing abundance of druses, several cell-layers thick adaxially, but very thin and almost transparent abaxially, thus revealing dark brown colour of testa
• Pappus white and spongy, coroniform, or more often an adaxial auricle
• Marginal florets of disciform capitula female, fertile, 2-lobed, almost filiform
• Cypselas ± terete, tapering at both ends, conspicuously rugose with short-stalked glands scattered all over, but without myxogenic cells; pericarp spongy and containing druses
• Pappus 0
• Disc florets bisexual, 4- or 5-lobed, number of lobes varying within same species; corolla tube of thin texture, often dilated at base; limb campanulate, partly enervate
• Anthers ecalcarate and ecaudate
• Style branches with or without resin ducts
• Cypselas of 2 kinds, either as in rays, or, in some species, obovoid with thin pericarp all around, myxogenic especially abaxially
• Pappus 0

Nomenclature:

• Foveolina Källersjö
  • Källersjö: 316 (1988)
  • Bremer & Humphries: 155 (1993)
  • Bremer: 474 (1994)
• Matricaria L.
  • Linnaeus: 891 (1753), in part excluding type.
• Pentzia Thunb.
  • Thunberg: 145 (1800), in part excluding type.
• Gastrosulum Sch.Bip.
  • Schultz 'Bipontius': 29 (1844), section Gastrolepis Sch.Bip

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 5, endemic, Namibia, Northern and Western Cape