Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs, sometimes scandent
• Leaves opposite, sessile or petiolate, usually scabrid or hairy, margins toothed, rarely 3-lobed
• Capitula discoid or radiate, many-flowered, solitary or in lax corymbs
• Involucre hemispherical; bracts in 1-3 rows, inner enfolding ray florets
• Receptacle convex or conical, paleate; paleae oblong to obovate, boat-shaped, conduplicate and enclosing disc florets
• Ray florets female, fertile or sterile; corolla yellow, strap-shaped, lamina 2- or 3-toothed, longer than tube; ovary keeled on face or with narrow, marginal wings
• Disc florets bisexual, fertile; corolla yellow; tube slightly widened upwards and abruptly contracted at base, 5-toothed
• Anthers obtuse or shortly sagittate at base; with ovate, apical appendage
• Style swollen at base, with linear, apiculate, glandular-pilose branches
• Cypselas obovoid, 3- or 4-angled, laterally compressed, apically usually truncate or concave
• Pappus of caducous awns or bristles
• x = 5 (8 - 1 report) (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Melanthera Rohr
  • Rohr: 213 (1792)
  • Phillips: 816 (1951)
  • Wild: 3 (1965)
  • Hilliard: 311 (1977)
  • Karis & Ryding: 595 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 20, SE United States, Mexico, Central America, West Indies, tropical Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 4, naturalised, Namibia, Botswana, Northern Province, Mpumalanga, Swaziland, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape