The genus name Osteospermum is derived from the ancient Greek words osteon, meaning ‘bone’ and sperma, meaning ‘seed’, referring to the very hard seed inside the fruit. Osteospermum is a large genus of around 90 species of mainly yellow-flowered annual and perennial daisies distributed in the Mediterranean, throughout temperate Africa, and in southern Africa, but with most of its diversity in the Greater Cape Floristic Region of South Africa (Manning & Goldblatt 2012). While the tribe Calenduleae, to which Osteospermum belongs, is characterised by the lack of a pappus, dispersal instead being aided by outgrowths on the fruit (Nordenstam  Kallersjo 2009), the genus Osteospermum is distinguished from other genera in Calenduleae largely by the fact that the central disc florets are functionally male and do not produce fruit. The widely utilised Eurasian genus Calendula L., now Osteospermum section Calendula (Manning & Goldblatt 2012) is nested within Osteospermum (Nordenstam & Kallersjo 2009; Sadler et al. 2022).

The specific epithet scariosum refers to the margins of the involucral bracts and is derived from the botanical Latin scariosus meaning ‘scarious’ or ‘of thin, dry membranous texture and not green’, the opposite of herbaceous (Magill 1990).

In 1838, the Swiss botanist De Candolle, working in Geneva, described two species in the same publication: Osteospermum scariosum, based on a collection by Ecklon & Zeyher from “Graafreynet”, and Tripteris aghillana, based on a collection by Drége from “Cap. Aghillas”. The genus name Tripteris is derived from the Greek and Latin tri, meaning ‘three’, and the Greek pteron, meaning ‘wing’, referring to the three-winged fruits. In 1943, the Swedish botanist Tycho Norlindh, merged Tripteris into Osteospermum, creating subgenus Tripteris for species with three-winged fruits, and he reaslised that Tripteris aghillana and Osteospermum scariosum were the same species (Norlindh 1943). In 2006, another Swedish botanist, Bertil Nordenstam, resurrected the genus Tripteris, and so Osteospermum scariosum again became Tripteris aghillana, the oldest available name (Nordenstam 2006). Osteospermum scariosum remained a synonym of T. aghillana. In 2012, during the phylogenetic and DNA sequencing era, new data demonstrated that Tripteris species were scattered inside the Osteospermum lineage. As a result, Tripteris aghillana was again changed to Osteospermum scariosum (Manning & Goldblatt 2012).