Source:
SSA
Description:
Perennial herbs or subshrubs, aromatic, often canescent. Leaves alternate, incised or variously pinnately dissected. Capitula disciform, small, mainly pendulous, in racemose panicles, few-flowered. Involucre ovoid or broadly campanulate; bracts in few rows with scarious margins. Receptacle flat, convex or hemispherical, epaleate, sometimes pilose. Marginalflorets female, fertile; corolla narrowly tubular, sometimes swollen below, 2- or 3-toothed. Discflorets bisexual, fertile or functionally male; corolla yellow, cylindric, sometimes narrowed or swollen at base, sometimes dilated above, 5-lobed. Anthers ecalcarate and ecaudate or minutely pointed at base; apical appendage deltoid, sometimes subulate-acuminate. Style of female florets linear, truncate, penicillate; of bisexual florets linear or linear-spathulate, usually penicillate; undivided in functionally male florets. Cypselas subglobose, smooth, 2-ribbed or multistriate, thin-walled, occasionally hairy. Pappus 0. x = 9 (8, 13, 17) (aneuploids, high polyploidy, B-chromosomes).
Distribution:
Species 388, mainly northern hemisphere but few species in South America, Africa and Hawaiian Islands; 2 in sthn Afr.: Artemisia afra Jacq. ex Willd. (indigenous) and * A. vulgaris L. (naturalised), widespread but absent from Northern Cape.
Classification:
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