Gorteria is a genus of small annual herbaceous plants or shrubs that is assigned to the daisy family (Compositae or Asteraceae).

[1] Like in almost all Asteraceae, the individual flowers are 5-merous, small and clustered in typical heads, and are surrounded by an involucre, consisting of in this case several whorls of bracts, which are merged at their base.

The fruits remain attached to their common base when ripe, and it is the entire head that breaks free from the plant.

One or few seeds germinate inside the flower head which can be found at the foot of plants during their first year.

These involucres become woody with age, and the entire flower heads detach from the mother plant with the fruits (or cypselas) inside them.

There are between five and fourteen infertile ray florets that have a base color that ranges between cream and dark orange.

Furthermore, the species of Gorteria share spine-like hairs on the corollas of both ray- and disc florets, the bracts of the involucre merged only at their foot, and crystals below the skin of the outer seed coat.

Carl Peter Thunberg in 1798 reviewed Gorteria and considered the interlocked margins (or connation) of the involucral bracts diagnostic for the genus, but this is in fact common to the entire subtribe Gorteriinae.

He distinguished ten herbaceous species and two woody, seven including G. diffusa and G. integrifolia new to science.

The Gorteriinae contain two groups, one comprising Berkheya, Cullumia, Cuspidia, Didelta and Heterorhachis, the other one Gorteria and its close relatives of the genera Gazania, Berkheyopsis, and Roessleria.