''Afrocirsium'' is a genus of

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...

s in the sunflower family,

Asteraceae Asteraceae () is a large family (biology), family of flowering plants that consists of over 32,000 known species in over 1,900 genera within the Order (biology), order Asterales. The number of species in Asteraceae is rivaled only by the Orchi ...

. It includes three species of

thistle Thistle is the common name of a group of flowering plants characterized by leaves with sharp spikes on the margins, mostly in the family Asteraceae. Prickles can also occur all over the planton the stem and on the flat parts of the leaves. T ...

s native to the mountains of eastern tropical Africa. They are spiny perennial herbs growing 0.5 to 2.5 meters tall. They have the plumose pappus characteristic of genus ''

Cirsium ''Cirsium'' is a genus of Perennial plant, perennial and Biennial plant, biennial flowering plants in the Asteraceae, one of several genera known commonly as thistles. They are more precisely known as plume thistles. These differ from other thist ...

'', but have distinct characteristics like phyllaries with well-developed pectinate appendages which are not present in ''Cirsium'' and the other genera in the ''Carduus-Cirsium'' group.Moreyra, Lucía D., Núria Garcia-Jacas, Cristina Roquet, Jennifer R. Ackerfield, Turan Arabacı, Carme Blanco-Gavaldà, Christian Brochmann, Juan Antonio Calleja, Tuncay Dirmenci, Kazumi Fujikawa, and et al. 2023. African Mountain Thistles: Three New Genera in the Carduus-Cirsium Group. ''Plants'' 12, no. 17: 3083. https://doi.org/10.3390/plants12173083 All are native to

Afromontane The Afromontane regions are subregions of the Afrotropical realm, one of the Earth's eight biogeographic realms, covering the plant and animal species found in the mountains of Africa and the southern Arabian Peninsula. The Afromontane regions o ...

or Afroalpine regions of eastern tropical Africa between 1,600 and 4,600 meters elevation, ranging from South Sudan and Ethiopia to Zambia. The species now placed in genus ''Afrocirsium'' were previously placed in genus ''

''. The sub-Saharan African species have morphological and karyological features of genera ''Carduus'' and ''

''. A phylogenetic study by Moreyra ''et al.'' concluded that these African species formed a

clade In biology, a clade (), also known as a Monophyly, monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics, a modern approach t ...

distinct from ''Carduus'' and ''Cirsium'', and sister to the newly described genus '' Afrocarduus''.

Species

Three species are accepted. *'' Afrocirsium buchwaldii'' – South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Zambia *'' Afrocirsium schimperi'' – Ethiopia *'' Afrocirsium straminispinum'' – Ethiopia

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q126281660 Cardueae Asteraceae genera Afromontane flora