Description :

• Herbs, shrubs, small trees or vines
• Leaves mostly alternate, sometimes rosulate or opposite or verticillate, mostly entire or serrate-dentate only
• Capitula mostly discoid; very variously arranged, solitary, corymbose, paniculate, scorpioid cymose, clustered, etc
• Involucral bracts generally imbricate in several rows
• Receptacle generally epaleate
• Disc florets bisexual, regular, 5-lobed, often glandular and sometimes pilose; white, pink, violet, blue, red or purple, rarely yellow or orange
• Anthers calcarate but mostly ecaudate; apical appendage elongate, obtuse-rounded; endothecial tissue polarised
• Style slender with long, filiform branches, pilose dorsally along style branches and on shaft below; hairs mostly acute
• Cypselas oblong to obovoid-obconical, often ribbed or angled; frequently sericeous with twin hairs or glabrous, often glandular
• Pappus of scabrid-barbellate bristles, rarely plumose, or of scales, or a corona, frequently double with outer row of much shorter scales or bristles, sometimes 0

Nomenclature:

• Vernonieae
  • Cassini: 203 (1819)
  • Pope: 56 (1992)
  • Bremer: 212 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global : Genera 98, pantropical, South America, Central and North America, West Indies, tropical and southern Africa, Madagascar, few in tropical Asia and 1 in N Australia
• Southern Africa : Genera 7, species 51

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
• POPE, G.V. 1992. 97. Compositae . Flora zambesiaca 6,1

Resources:

• Key to Asteraceae tribes
• Key to Vernonieae genera

• Vernonieae genera: