The Rand Flora is a well-known floristic pattern in which unrelated plant lineages show similar disjunct distributions in the continental margins of Africa and adjacent islands—Macaronesia-northwest Africa, Horn of Africa-Southern Arabia, Eastern Africa, and Southern Africa. These lineages are now separated by environmental barriers such as the arid regions of the Sahara and Kalahari Deserts or the tropical lowlands of Central Africa. Alternative explanations for the Rand Flora pattern range from vicariance and climate-driven extinction of a widespread pan-African flora to independent dispersal events and speciation in situ. To provide a temporal framework for this pattern, we used published data from nuclear and chloroplast DNA to estimate the age of disjunction of 17 lineages that span 12 families and nine orders of angiosperms. We further used these estimates to infer diversification rates for Rand Flora disjunct clades in relation to their higher-level encompassing lineages. Our results indicate that most disjunctions fall within the Miocene and Pliocene periods, coinciding with the onset of a major aridification trend, still ongoing, in Africa. Age of disjunctions seemed to be related to the climatic affinities of each Rand Flora lineage, with sub-humid taxa dated earlier (e.g., Sideroxylon) and those with more xeric affinities (e.g., Campylanthus) diverging later. We did not find support for significant decreases in diversification rates in most groups, with the exception of older subtropical lineages (e.g., Sideroxylon, Hypericum, or Canarina), but some lineages (e.g., Cicer, Campylanthus) showed a long temporal gap between stem and crown ages, suggestive of extinction. In all, the Rand Flora pattern seems to fit the definition of biogeographic pseudocongruence, with the pattern arising at different times in response to the increasing aridity of the African continent, with interspersed periods of humidity allowing range expansions.

The genus Santolina is represented in the Iberian Peninsula and Balearic Islands mainly by two complexes of species: S. rosmarinifolia aggr. and S. chamaecyparissus aggr., with a great similarity between the taxa included in each of these complexes. In the study of Santolina for the “Flora iberica” project, we prefer the species rank for the taxa with main differences in foliar and involucral bracts. Two new combinations, S. vedranensis and S. montiberica, are proposed here on the basis of our morphological analysis and on evidences from our ongoing molecular studies.

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A molecular phylogenetic study of the African Mutisieae s.l. (Asteraceae) was performed using the chloroplast markers ndhF and trnL‐F. The sequences of 46 species, including three representatives of Cynareae (Cardueae), were analysed applying maximum parsimony and Bayesian inference, with Mutisia and Hecastocleis as outgroups. Four main clades corresponding to the tribes Cynareae, Dicomeae, Tarchonantheae and Oldenburgieae were identified, although relationships among them were unresolved. Dicomeae split into two main clades, which on the basis of these results and a previous morphological‐anatomical phylogenetic analysis are proposed as two new subtribes: Dicominae and Pleiotaxinae. Within Dicominae, Dicoma welwitschii is located outside the Dicoma clade, in a clade that includes the Pasaccardoa species. Given the singular morphology of D. welwitschii, the new genus Dicomopsis has been proposed. A more detailed study with additional markers will be necessary to decide whether Pasaccardoa baumii should be included in Dicomopsis or described as a monotypic genus. The topology of the Tarchonantheae clade does not contribute to elucidating the relationships between Tarchonanthus and Brachylaena. The four species of Oldenburgia form a well‐supported monophyletic group (Oldenburgieae), despite their heterogeneous morphology.

An alphabetical list of all the validly published names of taxa in Erythrocephalum (Asteraceae: Dicomeae) is presented with details of all types of which four are new lectotypifications and three new neotypifications. The names first published in Achyrothalamus and Haemastegia are also included. All names are assigned to their accepted taxa in this synopsis, the first published for the genus, which also includes an analytical key and information on distribution.