They can usually be distinguished by using a combination of two diagnostic characters: the shape of their leaves and the shape of the inner row of terminal involucre bracts:[4] Gazanias have become popular garden subjects, especially in Europe because of their hardiness, and horticultural breeding has led to numerous cultivars with large flower-heads and a variety of colours.

[8] The genus Gazania was established by Joseph Gaertner in 1791 in his monumental work De Fructibus et Seminibus Plantarum.

The specific name 'krebsiana' honours the German naturalist and apothecary, Georg Ludwig Engelhard Krebs (1792—1844), who collected natural history specimens in South Africa on behalf of the Berlin Zoological Museum (in the present day the Berlin's Natural History Museum).

[9] The noted taxonomist N. E. Brown observed that the genus is one of the most perplexing a botanist may deal with - the foliage within a species may be extremely variable, and the involucral bracts are extraordinarily diverse in shape and placement.

Burchell came across the species a number of times between 1811 and 1814, but it seems to have reached Europe only as late as 1893 through a Mr. Max Leichtlin from Baden-Baden, and oddly in the same year through a Mr. Gumbleton, who had received seeds from a Mr. Adlam in Natal.