Source:
SSA
Description:
Slender herbs or small subshrubs, often with rigid indumentum, without stinging hairs; plants monoecious. Leaves alternate, toothed, petiolate, often whitish-tomentose beneath, with midrib branching into 3; arachnoid tomentum present; with dot-like cystoliths; stipules lateral, free. Inflorescences with flowers crowded within a tubular-campanulate 3-6-partite involucre, densely covered with woolly hairs. Male flowers many at periphery of inflorescence, stalked; perianth club-shaped in bud, becoming irregularly 3-lobed or 3-toothed; terminal lobe inflexed; stamen 1; rudimentary ovary 0. Female flowers sessile, l-5 in centre of male involucre; perianth 0; ovary straight; stigma filiform, papillose-hispid, long-persistent. Achene ovate in outline, compressed, woolly, enclosed in involucre. Seed with thin coat; endosperm scanty. x= 11 (1 report).
Distribution:
Species 6, Canary and Cape Verde Islands, S Spain, India, North and South Africa; 3 in sthn Afr., mainly Namibia and Northern Cape, also Western Cape.
Classification:
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