Brachylaena

Brachylaena, commonly called the wild silver oaks, is a genus of shrubs and trees in the Asteraceae family, mostly dioecious but rarely bearing bisexual florets. The generic name, Brachylaena, is derived from the Greek words brachys meaning short and chlainion meaning a small cloak, referring to the floral bracts that are shorter than the florets.

The simple, alternate or spiralling leaves have short petioles or nearly none. The margins are mostly entire, occasionally toothed or spiny. The blades are usually smooth above and whitish woolly below.

The thistle-like, yellowish discoid floret clusters grow in sprays from leaf axils or stem-tips. The somewhat disc-shaped clusters sometimes have peduncles and bell-shaped or oblong involucres. The overlapping bracts grow in three to many rows. The receptacle below the involucre is flat or convex and honeycombed.

A male floret has a tubular corolla that widens above, ending in five or six lobes. The anthers are slender. Female clusters usually consist of up to ten florets and are larger than the male ones. The style is cylindrical and thickened above, the single-chambered ovary oblong or ovoid and ribbed. The pappus consists of bristles in one row. The female corolla is thread-like and five-lobed with staminodes sometimes present. The style-branches are short and flat.

The wind-dispersed fruit is a nearly cylindrical to spindle-shaped nutlet, sometimes hairy with about eight ribs and a parachute-like pappus consisting of several rows of bristles.

There are fifteen Brachylaena species in Africa, on Madagascar and some associated islands, nine of which occur in southern Africa. Brachylaena huillensis, found in the northeast of South Africa, is the only widespread species that may dominate in some terrain but is heavily used for its wood. Tarchonanthus that has a camphor-like smell is a similar genus, sometimes confused with Brachylaena.

The wood of some species is generally used to make small implements or for carving, in olden times also to build wagons. Some of the species featured in traditional medicine in the past. The wood ashes of some species served in making soap. Some species are good bee trees.

The plant in picture is B. elliptica (Leistner, (Ed.), 2000; Coates Palgrave, 2002; Pooley, 1993; Andrew, 2017; Wikipedia; http://pza.sanbi.org).