Source:
SSA
Description:
Annual or biennial herbs. Leaves rosulate to alternate, white-veined to variegated above, sinuate-lobate or pinnatifid, undulate, margins spiny. Capitula discoid, solitary, terminal, erect or drooping. Involucre broadly subglobose; bracts marginally spiny and spine-tipped. Receptacle flat, densely setose. Florets bisexual, fertile; corolla purple; tube slender below, abruptly expanded above, deeply 5-lobed. Anthers with very short tails; filaments connate into papillose tube. Style scarcely thickened below branches, there furnished with ring of short hairs; branches linear-lanceolate, flattened, connate, minutely papillose outside. Cypselas obovoid, somewhat compressed, glabrous, attachment scar +/- horizontal, central. Pappus double: outer row of scabrid, deciduous bristles, basally connate in a ring, inner row of short hairs. x = 17 (7).
Distribution:
Species 2, Mediterranean region; * Silybum marianum (L.) Gaertn. is an introduced weed occurring in Western and Eastern Cape.
Classification:
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