Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs, rarely frutescent, whitish woolly
• Leaves alternate, usually sessile, sometimes amplexicaul, tomentose (hair type B), eglandular; margin flat, entire
• Capitula disciform, few together, rarely solitary, terminal or racemosely arranged, sometimes surrounded by whorl of leaves
• Involucral bracts in few rows, light brown, buff, creamy or white; stereome undivided
• Receptacle flat, nearly smooth or honeycombed, epaleate
• Marginal florets female, filiform, purple, outnumbering disc florets
• Disc florets bisexual; corolla purple, narrowly tubular, lobes erect, all with hairs on back
• Anthers ecalcarate, caudate with short tails; apical appendage flat, as wide as thecae; endothecial tissue polarised
• Style bifid; style branches truncate and penicillate with obtuse sweeping hairs apically; stigmatic surface separated
• Cypselas small, oblong, glabrous or sparsely hairy with short, clavate, not myxogenic, twin hairs; epidermis with imbricate papillae
• Pappus dimorphic, of free, scabrid, capillary bristles in 1 row, basally with patent cilia; apical cells subclavate in disc florets, acute in female florets
• x = 7 (8, 9, 10, 13) (aneuploids, high polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• Gnaphalium L.
  • Linnaeus: 850 (1753)
  • Harvey: 260 (1865)
  • Hilliard: 267 (1981)
  • Hilliard: 17 (1983)
  • Anderberg: 167 (1991)
  • Anderberg: 358 (1994)
• Amphidoxa DC.
  • Candolle.: 246 (1838).
• Demidium DC.
  • Candolle: 246 (1838)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 80, cosmopolitan
• Southern Africa: Species 14, widespread but absent from Swaziland