Description:

• Shrublets or shrubs, usually profusely, sympodially branched, larger plants dense, erect or cushion-like and spreading; new shoots developing from below terminal inflorescences of previous season
• Leaves alternate, small, filiform, oblong or obovate; adaxial surface villous, hairs unicellular; margins entire, involute; apex mucronate, apiculate or obtuse
• Synflorescence terminal with capitula solitary, in small clusters or in very dense, globose, subglobose or cylindrical aggregations
• Capitula 1-10-flowered; individual heads radiate or discoid, composed of strap-shaped and/or tubular flowers
• Involucral bracts in 1-4 rows, chaffy, lacking a distinct stereome, broadly or narrowly cymbiform; apices acute or acuminate; margins entire, sometimes undulate or with clavate outgrowths
• Receptacle small, conical
• Ray florets 3-lobed, female or sterile, white or pink, strap-shaped
• Disc florets 5-lobed, lobes erect or spreading star-like, male or bisexual, white or pink
• Anthers apically lanceolate, basally tailed
• Style bifid
• Nectary present in tubular flowers
• Cypselas fertile or sterile; small, symmetrical, with 5 or 10 vascular bundles, surface glabrous, puberulous or villous
• Pappus present or 0, caducous or persistent, of 3-15(-20) plumose or barbed bristles, free or connate in a ring or tube at base
• x = 9 (1 report)

Nomenclature:

• Disparago Gaertn.
  • Gaertner: 463, t. 173 (1791)
  • Harvey: 277 (1865)
  • Levyns: 95 (1936)
  • Anderberg: 77 (1991)
  • Koekemoer: 197 (1993)
  • Anderberg: 331 (1994)
• Wigandia Neck.
  • Necker: 95 (1790) not of Kunth
  • Lessing: 362 (1832)

Distribution & Notes:

• Southern Africa: Species 9, mainly in the fynbos of the Western Cape; inland boundaries of its distribution are along the mountains bordering the Karoo or the transition areas between fynbos and other biomes; Disparago tortilis (DC.) Sch.Bip., is more widely distributed and spreads along the south and east coast to Umtamvuna in KwaZulu-Natal, where it occurs in relict fynbos