Platycarpha is a genus of South African plants within the family Asteraceae.

[3][4][5] The name Platycarpha is derived from two Greek words, platys "broad" and karphos "a chip of straw or wood, a scale, a dry stalk".

[8] This species had been named Cynara glomerata by Carl Peter Thunberg in 1800,[9] and was moved to Platycarpha by A.P.

de Candolle in 1836 in Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis.

Most authors have placed it in the tribe Arctotideae[4] until molecular phylogenetic studies showed it to be closer to Vernonieae.