Annuals or perennial herbs, usually hairy, the hairs often glandular. Leaves in a basal rosette, woolly in the axils. Involucral bracts in several series. Floral bracts 0. Receptacle woolly with long hairs surrounding the flowers. Flowers 3-merous. Petals usually eglandular. Male flowers: sepals connate below the middle into a tube with free lobes; petals completely connate into a membranous tube; stamens 3, as many as the petals; anthers white or yellowish. Female flowers: sepals free; petals connate in the middle, the bases and tips free; ovary with 3 carpels; style 3-branched at the tip, the branches usually alternating with 3 swollen-tipped glandular appendages. Seeds ellipsoid to cylindric. Worldwide: c. 200 species, mainly in South America; 14 species known from tropical and South Africa Caprivi: 2 cultivated taxa. |
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