Garuleum

Garuleum is a genus of perennial herbs, shrublets and shrubs in the Asteraceae or daisy family. Some of the plants are sticky, rough-textured or finely hairy, the stems sometimes whitish grey.

The sometimes aromatic leaves are alternate, stalkless, pinnately cleft but not to the midribs, sometimes with toothed margins or sharply pointed.

The stalked flowerheads grow solitary or in corymb-shaped loose groups at stem-tips. The heads have both ray and disc florets. The involucre below the head is hemispherical or bell-shaped, the overlapping bracts in two or three rows. Bract-shape is linear or ovate. The bracts are sometimes reflexed and sometimes pointed, their margins usually fringed.

The blue, purple, mauve, yellow or white ray florets are female, their laminae or blades three-toothed at the tips and up to three times the length of the tubes at the base. The disc florets are bisexual or male, their yellow tubes ending in five lance-shaped lobes, sometimes hairy on the outside.

The anthers are faintly eared at the base and have ovate appendages at their tips. The styles are cylindrical or linear, deeply two-branched into linear lobes and covered in hairs or papillae in their upper parts. The way the two style branches are shaped is characteristic of the Garuleum genus.

The fruits are obovate or heart-shaped and flattened with marginal wings but no pappuses.

All eight the Garuleum species occur in southern Africa. The genus, or at least some species may be of interest in horticulture. Some of the plants are palatable to game and stock, their presence a sign of well-managed veld.

The plant in picture is Garuleum bipinnatum (Leistner, (Ed.), 2000; Vlok and Schutte-Vlok, 2015; http://pza.sanbi.org).