Description :

• 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
• Ray florets female, fertile, mostly yellow, sometimes pink, purple, violet, rarely white
• Disc flowers 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)

Nomenclature:

• Senecio L.
  • Linnaeus: 866 (1753)
  • Harvey: 346 (1865)
  • Hilliard: 387 (1977)
  • Bremer: 508 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 1250; cosmopolitan, mostly South America and Africa
• Southern Africa : Species ± 300, widespread, some weedy, some toxic