Pegolettia

Pegolettia is a genus of shrubs, suffrutices and herbs in the Asteraceae family.

The leaves are simple, alternate and sessile, their shape thread-like, lance-shaped, oblong or spoon-shaped. The leaf margins are entire, toothed or pinnately divided. There are conspicuous gland dots on the surfaces, sometimes glandular hairs or bristly hairs.

The stalked flowerheads grow solitary or in corymb-like clusters at stem-tips. The cup-shaped involucre, variable in width, comprises bracts in three or four rows, the receptacle flat. The green bracts are narrowly lanceolate, oblong or obovate and glandular at the back with margins fringed.

Only bisexual disc florets of similar structure are produced. They are mostly yellow, sometimes purple or becoming so with age. The corolla tube attenuates to its base where it widens into a ring-shaped foot, the tube tip five-lobed and glandular. The anthers have branched tails and lance-shaped appendages at the tips. The style divides into two cylindrical or flattened branches, linear or spoon-shaped.

The fruits are cylindrical to flattened and finely ribbed with glandular hairs present. The pappus at the fruit tip has one or more rows of bristly to stiff hairs.

There are nine Pegolettia species occurring in Africa and the Middle East, all nine also found in southern Africa but not in the northwest. Pteronia is a similar genus but for its papery involucral bracts and untailed anthers.

At least some of the species are palatable to game and stock. Abundance of the plants signals well-managed veld. Essential oils have been obtained from some of the plants.

The plant in picture is Pegolettia baccaridifolia (Leistner, (Ed.), 2000; Vlok and Schutte-Vlok, 2015; iNaturalist; www.zimbabweflora.co.zw; http://redlist.sanbi.org).