S. King-Jones & M. Thulin (2005) Pluchea. Flora of Somalia 3: 496-501
Plants shrubs, subshrubs, or perennial herbs, strongly aromatic, glabrous to tomentose or woolly, often with glandular hairs. Leaves simple, entire to dentate or wdeeply lobed to pinnatifid. Inflorescences dense or open terminal clusters of sessile or pedunculate heads, rarely of solitary heads; heads usually disciform and heterogamous, rarely discoid and homogamous. Phyllaries in several series and closely imbricate, the outer phyllaries shorter than the quickly deciduous inner phyllaries; outer flowers usually outnumbering the inner, purple, pink, or white, filiform, female, with 2-branched styles; inner flowers tubular, whitish pink to bright purple, bisexual; anthers tailed; styles 2-fid, with sweeping hairs extending well below the bifurcation; achenes of outer flowers terete, fusiform, or subangular, indistinctly (3-)5-7-ribbed, glabrous or hairy; pappuses of 1 series of 4-30 white, barbellate, bristles; ahenes of inner flowers well developed or vestigial, often pale, glabrous or hairy.
Pluchea includes about 45 species and is native to tropical regions of both the Old and New Worlds. There are 12 species of Pluchea in Somaliland and Somalia, 8 being known from Somaliland.