Senecio

Annual or perennial herbs, subshrubs, shrubs, small trees or vines, very variable in habit and foliage, sometimes succulent. Leaves generally alternate, sometimes radical. Capitula radiate or discoid, solitary or cymose to corymbose-paniculate. Involucre generally calyculate, cylindric, campanulate or hemispherical; bracts mostly in 1 row, rarely in 2, sometimes connate. Receptacle always epaleate, flat or somewhat convex. Rayflorets female, fertile, mostly yellow, sometimes pink, purple, violet, rarely white. Discflowers bisexual or sometimes functionally male; corolla tubular, funnel-shaped or abruptly campanulate above, 5-lobed, yellow, whitish or variously coloured. Anthers ecalcarate, ecaudate or sometimes caudate; apical appendage ovate-lanceolate to oblong, flat; filament collar dilated; endothecial tissue radial. Style branches truncate to obtuse, with crown of hairs, without appendages, with discrete stigmatic lines. Cypselas ellipsoid-obovoid and ribbed, glabrous or pubescent, sometimes with myxogenic hairs. Pappus of many fine bristles, rarely 0. x = 10 (7, 9, 11, 12, 23) (aneuploids, high polyploidy, B-chromosomes).