Description:

• Shrublets
• Leaves ericoid, alternate, sessile, linear to oblanceolate, entire or rarely dentate, glabrous or pubescent
• Capitula discoid or rarely radiate, usually solitary and terminal, sometimes corymbose, pedunculate
• Involucre campanulate or globose; bracts in 4 rows, imbricate, with membranous margins
• Receptacle flat or convex, sometimes honeycombed, epaleate
• Ray florets, if present, female, yellow or blue
• Style with 2 branches
• Disc florets bisexual, fertile, yellow; tube often gradually widened above, 5-lobed
• Anthers linear, ecalcarate and ecaudate; with triangular, apical appendage
• Style linear, with 2 linear branches, with long, triangular appendages and sweeping hairs
• Cypselas compressed, obovate, marginally ribbed, apically usually with 2 resin sacs in ribs, pubescent, brownish
• Pappus in 2 rows; outer row of short, acute to obtuse scales, basally weakly united, rarely reduced to a ring, sometimes 0; inner row of many barbellate caducous bristles
• x = 9 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Chrysocoma L.
  • Linnaeus: 840 (1753)
  • Harvey: 93 (1865)
  • Merxmüller: 39 (1967)
  • Bayer: 259 (1981)
  • Bremer: 417 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 20, widespread but not reaching Northern Province, Mpumalanga and Swaziland
  • 1 extending to Mozambique