Description:

• Annual or rarely short-lived, perennial herbs
• Leaves alternate, shortly petiolate, ovate-lanceolate to linear, entire or serrate
• Capitula discoid; several- to many-flowered, in much-branched corymbs
• Involucre campanulate or subhemispherical; bracts herbaceous, in 3 to many rows, imbricate, acute or obtuse
• Receptacle flat, epaleate
• Corolla mauve or purple; tube cylindric below, shallowly campanulate above; lobes 5, lanceolate, longer than campanulate part of tube
• Anthers obtuse at base; with short, ovate, membranous apical appendage
• Style branches filiform, subulate; pollen-sweeping hairs relatively long, exserted
• Cypselas oblong-obconical, usually strongly 2-6-ribbed, glandular or rarely sparsely pilose between ribs and with thickened apical rim
• Pappus 0
• x = 10 (8 - 1 report) (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Ethulia L.f.
  • Linnaeus f.: 1 (1762)
  • Harvey: 47 (1865)
  • Oliver & Hiern: 262 (1877)
  • Merxmüller: 63 (1967)
  • Hilliard: 24 (1977)
  • Gilbert & Jeffrey: 167 (1989)
  • Bremer: 220 (1994)
• Hoehnelia Schweinf.
  • Schweinfurth: 861 (1892)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 19, tropical Africa and less commonly in tropical Asia
• Southern Africa: The widespread weedy species *Ethulia conyzoides L.f., is the only introduced representative, recorded from the Northern Province, Mpumalanga and Gauteng