Description :

• Herbs, shrubs, subshrubs, trees or vines
• Leaves alternate or sometimes rosulate, entire to variously serrate-dentate or lobed, pinnately or sometimes palmately veined, rarely succulent
• Capitula radiate, disciform or discoid, solitary or cymose to corymbose-paniculate
• Involucral bracts mostly in 1 row, oblong-lanceolate, calyculate (outer row of smaller bracts) or ecalyculate; rarely in 2 subequal rows (biseriate), sometimes connate
• Receptacle always epaleate and mostly naked
• Ray florets female, fertile, yellow, white or variously coloured
• Disc florets bisexual or sometimes functionally male, 5-lobed, yellow, whitish or variously coloured; outer florets in disciform capitula female, tubular or filiform
• Anthers ecalcarate, ecaudate or sometimes caudate; apical appendage ovate-lanceolate to oblong, flat; endothecial tissue of elongated cells, radial or polarised; filament collar slender or often much dilated with swollen cells
• Style in bisexual florets with oblong-linear, dorsally glabrous or rarely papillose style branches, apically usually truncate and penicillate, sometimes almost glabrous, sometimes acute to acuminate with sterile appendage and ± fused hairs; hairs obtuse; stigmatic areas in 2 separate lines or partly or wholly continuous ventrally on style branches
• Cypselas rather uniform, mostly ellipsoid-oblong and ribbed, rarely compressed, glabrous or pubescent with twin hairs, rarely myxogenic
• Pappus of scabrid-barbellate (never plumose), fine or coarse bristles; bristles rarely reduced and short or 0

Nomenclature:

• Senecioneae
  • Cassini: 196 (1819)
  • Bremer: 494 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Genera 120, worldwide, especially abundant in Central and South America, tropical and southern Africa;
• Southern Africa : Genera 20, species 593

References:

• BREMER, K. 1994. Asteraceae , cladistics & classification . Timber Press, Portland, Oregon
• CASSINI, A.H.G. DE. 1819. In Journal de physique, de chimie, d'histoire naturelle et des artes 88
• JEFFREY, C. 1986. The Senecioneae in East Tropical Africa. Kew Bulletin 41

Resources:

• Key to Asteraceae tribes
• Key to Senecioneae genera

• Senecioneae genera: