Search Results

Information Annuals, biennials, or perennials, 20–300 cm, glabrous or tomentose. Stems erect, ascending, or spreading, simple or branched. Leaves basal and cauline; petiolate or sessile; proximal blade margins often ± deeply lobed, (spiny in C. benedicta), distal ± smaller, often entire, faces glabrous or ± tomentose, sometimes also villous, strigose, or puberulent, often glandular-punctate. Heads discoid, disciform, or radiant, borne singly or in corymbiform arrays. Involucres cylindric or ovoid to hemispheric. Phyllaries many in 6–many series, unequal, proximal part appressed, body margins entire, distal parts expanded into erect to spreading, usually ± dentate or fringed, linear to ovate appendages, spine-tipped or spineless. Receptacles flat, epaleate, bristly. Florets 10–many; outer usually sterile, corollas slender and inconspicuous to much expanded, ± bilateral; inner fertile, corollas white to blue, pink, purple, or yellow, bilateral or radial, often bent at junction of tubes and throats, lobes linear-oblong, acute; anther bases tailed, apical appendages oblong; style branches: fused portions with minutely hairy nodes, distinct portions minute. Cypselae ± barrel-shaped, ± compressed, smooth or ribbed, apices entire (denticulate in C. benedicta), glabrous or with fine, 1-celled hairs, attachment scars lateral (with or without elaiosomes); pappi 0 or ± persistent, of 1–3 series of smooth or minutely barbed, stiff bristles or narrow scales. x = 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15.