Common Name: Gazania
Description: Perennial herbs with white tomentum.
Leaves usually radical, rarely cauline and alternate, flat, entire to pinnatisect.
Heads pedunculate, solitary, ?radiate; heads campanulate; involucral bracts 2- or 3-seriate, lanceolate, herbaceous; receptacle flat or slightly convex, naked. Ray florets in 1 row, neuter; disc florets bisexual, 5-merous, tubular, outer fertile, inner usually sterile.
Achenes obovoid, villous; pappus of numerous fine scales in 1 row.
Distribution and occurrence: World: 16 species, southern Africa. Australia: 2 species (naturalized), N.S.W., S.A.
Several species are cultivated as ornamentals.
Text by L. Murray
Taxon concept:
| | Key to the species | |
| 1 | Leaves tufted at ends of rhizomes, mostly linear to narrow-lanceolate, older dead leaves persistent; peduncles usually >20 cm long; free part of involucral bract as long as or longer than the fused basal cup-like part | Gazania linearis |
| Leaves tufted at ends of trailing stems, mostly oblanceolate to narrow-spathulate, dead leaves deciduous; peduncles usually > 15 cm long; free part of invloucral bracts shorter than the fused cup-like part | Gazania rigens |
|
