Description :

• Annual or perennial herbs, sometimes woody at base, often glandular and aromatic
• Leaves alternate, simple, sessile, entire or shallowly toothed
• Capitula radiate, solitary and pedunculate; sometimes branched
• Involucre campanulate or hemispherical; bracts in 1 or 2 rows, linear, acuminate, subequal, with narrow scarious margin
• Receptacle flat, epaleate
• Ray florets female, fertile, strap-shaped, yellow or orange
• Disc florets functionally male, tubular, yellow, orange, brown or violet-purple
• Anthers ecalcarate, sagittate-caudate; filaments free; endothecial tissue polarised
• Style of disc florets undivided, with acute conical tip surrounded by ring of short hairs
• Outer cypselas with narrow beak, sometimes cymbiform, or 3-winged; inner smaller, strongly falcate or almost annular, sometimes winged; all dorsally tuberculate-rugose
• Pappus 0
• x = 8 (5, 7, 9, 11) (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Calendula L.
  • Linnaeus: [8] (1735)
  • Meikle: 206 (1976)
  • Nordenstam: 373 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Species ± 15, Macaronesia, Africa, Mediterranean region, southern and central Europe, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Yemen
• Southern Africa : Species 1: * Calendula arvensis L., naturalised as weed, KwaZulu-Natal