Description :

• Annual herbs with milky latex
• Leaves rosulate, entire to pinnatifid
• Capitula ligulate, on stout, rather long peduncles
• Involucre with bracts in 2 distinct, unequal rows
• Florets bisexual, fertile; corolla yellow, dorsally sometimes with reddish or greenish stripes
• Style with branches long, sweeping hairs short
• Cypselas narrowly terete and incurved, enclosed by persistent involucral bracts
• Pappus dimorphic: in outer florets a small corona; in inner florets of few, coarse, basally flattened and scale-like, scabrid bristles
• x = 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11, 13 (aneuploids, polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• *Hedypnois Mill.
  • Miller: [606] (1754)
  • Sell: 307 (1976)
  • Bremer: 197 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species 3, Macronesia to the Mediterranean
• Southern Africa : Species 1: * Hedypnois cretica (L.) Dum.Cours., an introduced species, occurs sporadically in the Western and Eastern Cape