Othonna L.

Magoswana, Luvo, Boatwright, Stephen, Magee, Anthony & Manning, John, 2022, A taxonomic revision of the Othonna auriculifolia Less. group (Asteraceae: Senecioneae: Othonninae), Bothalia, African Biodiversity & amp; Conservation 52 (1), pp. 1-9 : 2

Othonna L. , Species Plantarum 2: 924. (1753).

Type: O. coronopifolia L. , lecto., designated by Green: 184 (1929).

Doria Thunb. , Nova Genera Plantarum 12: 162. (1800). Type: Not designated.

Shrubs, subshrubs, or geophytes with underground tuber or herbs, ± succulent, crown and leaf axils cobwebbed. Leaves alternate, sometimes crowded basally, linear to ovate or obovate-spatulate or lyrate to pinnatisect, sub-succulent or leathery. Inflorescence terminal, pedunculate, capitula solitary or laxly cymose or paniculate. Capitula heterogamous, radiate or disciform. Involucre campanulate, bracts uniseriate, free and adherent or connate up to 1 / 2, lanceolate to oblong, glabrous, green with scarious margins. Receptacle conical, punctate, glabrous, epaleate. Marginal florets female-fertile, usually yellow or sometimes white, rarely pink to mauve, filiform or ligulate; ovary glabrous or appressed-puberulous with white twin hairs; style branches with discrete lateral stigmatic areas, apices oblanceolate and shortly papillate. Cypselas ellipsoid to obovoid, 10-ribbed, dark brown, densely appressed-puberulous with myxogenic or non-myxogenic white twin hairs, rarely glabrous; pappus bristles many, basally united, barbellate, persistent, beige or sometimes banded deep red. Disc florets functionally male, numerous, yellow or white to blue or pink, corolla tube funnel-shaped, 5-lobed; anthers obtuse at base with ovate apical appendages, filament collar balusteriform; ovary glabrous; style simple and cone-tipped, rarely with short branches but then without lateral stigmatic zones; pappus of ± 10 barbellate bristles, sometimes reduced to one or two bristles and lacking in one species, united basally, white.

Distribution and ecology: ± 90 spp., largely restricted to the Greater Cape Floristic Region, with a few species in the eastern summer rainfall regions of South Africa and some extending to southern Angola and Zimbabwe; usually on sandy flats or rocky slopes, rarely seasonally damp sandy flats.