Source:
SSA
Description:
Biennial or perennial herbs with milky latex. Leaves alternate, amplexicaul, entire, grass-like, glabrous. Capitula ligulate; solitary, terminal, long-peduncled. Involucre cylindric or narrowly campanulate; bracts in 1 row, lanceolate-acuminate, basally somewhat connate. Receptacle slightly convex, shallowly honeycombed, epaleate. Florets (ligules) bisexual, fertile; corolla yellow, blue or purple, strap-shaped, tube linear, slightly shorter than lamina, pilose at junction of lamina and tube; lamina broadly linear, truncate, 5-toothed. Anthers with base sagittate, auricles acute or shortly setaceous-acuminate. Style linear, becoming terete above, glandular-pubescent on cylindric portion; branches filiform, glandular. Cypselas fusiform, with slender beak, strongly ribbed; ribs tuberculate, pilose at apex, otherwise glabrous. Pappus of many plumose and intertwined bristles, often scabrid-barbellate apically. x = 6 (7) (polyploidy, B-chromosomes).
Distribution:
Species 50, temperate Eurasia, Mediterranean region; 3 occur as weeds of cultivation, not known from Namibia and Botswana.
Classification:
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