Description:

• Usually viscid shrubs or subshrubs, sometimes small trees, generally dioecious or only rarely monoecious
• Stems or branches commonly striate or angled
• Leaves alternate, rarely opposite, simple, entire, toothed or lobed, occasionally reduced to scales
• Capitula discoid or very rarely disciform, small, solitary or in racemes
• Involucre campanulate or cup-shaped; bracts imbricate, recurved in female plants when fruit mature
• Receptacle flat or convex, mostly epaleate
• Male capitula with bisexual functionally male florets; corolla tubular below, campanulate to funnel-shaped above, tube hairy, rarely also glandular, 5-lobed, yellowish white
• Anthers ecalcarate and ecaudate; with ovate-lanceolate, flat apical appendage
• Style without papillae, shortly bilobed, not spreading, with sweeping hairs
• Pappus: 1 row of persistent bristles
• Floret base with ring-like nectarium
• Female capitula with filiform female florets only, very rarely with few central bisexual florets as well, pubescent and glandular, apex 5-lobed, greenish white
• Style without sweeping hairs, 2-lobed, spreading
• Cypselas cylindrical or spindle-shaped, rarely ovate or elliptic, somewhat compressed, 8-10-(12-)ribbed, glabrous
• Pappus of accrescent bristles in many rows
• x = 9 (5 - 1 report) (aneuploids, B-chromosomes, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Baccharis L.
  • Linnaeus: 860 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 370 (1754)
  • Hellwig: 1 (1990)
  • Bremer: 413 (1994)
• Baccharidastrum Cabrera
  • Cabrera: 175 (1937).
• Baccharidiopsis Barroso
  • Barroso: 95 (1975)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 400; South and North America
• Southern Africa: Species 1: *Baccharis pingraea DC., naturalised, KwaZulu-Natal