Stoebe

Single or multi-stemmed, robust or weak shrubs or dwarf shrubs, up to 1.5 m tall, occasionally prostrate; branches densely or sparsely leafy, tomentose or glaucous. Leaves small, alternate, often ericoid and twisted, broadly cymbiform, linear or narrowly triangular, adaxial surface villous or tomentose, abaxial surface glabrous or covered in a matted layer of hairs, tips rounded mucronate or pungent, margins slightly or strongly involute. Synflorescences tight, globose or cylindrical, terminal heads, or an open or dense plumose arrangement of capitula. Capitula discoid, 1-flowered. Involucral bracts in a few rows, innermost dry and membranous, outermost shorter, often leafy. Receptacle stalk-like, epaleate. Ray florets 0. Disc florets bisexual, tubular, white, pink or wine-red, 5-lobed; lobes erect or spreading. Anthers apically acuminate, basally tailed. Style bifid, branches truncate, pencilled at tips. Nectary a small disk between style and cypsela or 0. Cypselas small, with or without a rim-like annulus, smooth or tomentose, trichomes short with tips rounded or longer, more flexible with tips acuminate. Pappus of 10-26 capillary bristles, plumose in upper part, fused in a ring at base, rarely free, 0 in Stoebe montana and S. schultzii. x = 8 (1 report).