H. Beentje (2006) 3: 489-494 (as Vernonia cinerascens)
Plants suffrutescent herbs or shrubs 0.3-2 m tall, much branched, sometimes clambering in other shrubs; branches white tomentose, when older also with short T-shaped hairs and brownish bark. Leaves sessile, grey-green, obovate to spatulate, 1-4 cm long, 0.3-1.8 cm wide, lower surfaces finely pubescent and ith sunken glands, becoming glabrous with age, upper surfaces always glabrous, margins subentire or crenate-denticulate, tips obtuse or rounded. Heads in terminal, open, divaricate cymes; involucres 3-5 mm tall; phyllaries in 3 series, green or greyish with purple-brown tops, ovate to lanceolate, pubescent. Pappuses double, outer pappuses of narrow scales 0.4-1 mm long, inner pappuses white, 3-5 mm long; corollas deep purple to mauve, 4.6-6.5 mm long, lobes 1-1.2 mm long, glabrous or with a few slender hairs below the tips, sparsely glandular. Achenes 2-32 mm long, strongly 5-10-ribbed, shortly pubescent.
Orbivestus cinerascens grows in Acacia-Commiphora bushland subdesert grassland at 30-1500 m. It was known from all 8 regions recognized in the Flora of Somalia.
Recent researd had resulted in the splitting of Vernonia into several different genera. Orbivestus is one of the segregate genera. It is still in the same tribe, Vernonieae, but in a different subtribe from Vernonia as currently interpreted. The Keybase version of key to genera for Somaliland and Somalia has been modified to reflect acceptance of Orbivestus.
Plants of the World Online (POWO): Orbivestus cinarescens. The distribution map shows the countries where the taxon is considered native or introduced but is now growing in the wild.
Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF): Orbivestus cinarescens. Records may be of cultivated specimens.