Oedera

Oedera is an Asteraceae genus of stiffly erect, heath-like shrubs and shrublets. The bushes may be single-stemmed (reseeders) or multi-stemmed (resprouters). The simple leaves are opposite, alternate or spiralling and overlapping, the leaf-shape mostly ovate to linear.

The yellow or golden capitula or flowerheads are few-flowered at stem-tips, usually sessile and sometimes in a common or shared, bell-shaped involucre. The receptacle is scaled, the scales in some species toothed. The bracts are mostly arranged in three or four rows. They are ovate or lanceolate, the surfaces coarse or hairy and the margins sometimes ciliate or glandular.

There are always ray florets that are female and spreading, the central discs populated with five-lobed, bell-shaped, bisexual florets, sometimes with some sterile ones present as well. The linear anthers have appendages to their tips. The ovary is linear and hairless, the style cylindrical with short, linear branches. The pappus is crowned with short scale-like bracts and no feathery bristles or hairs on the fruits. 

There are 18 species, all endemic to the Western and Eastern Cape. These bushes, commonly known in Afrikaans as perdekaroo (horses’ Karoo), are unpalatable to stock and game. An abundance of them indicates poor veld, often mismanaged by overgrazing.

The plant in picture is Oedera multipunctata, photographed in the Biedouw Valley during September (Leistner, (Ed.), 2000; Vlok and Schutte-Vlok, 2015; Manning, 2007; iNaturalist).