Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs, usually cano-tomentose
• Leaves alternate, sometimes radical, entire or sometimes toothed or pinnatisect
• Capitula usually disciform or 'radiate' (not true ray florets, radiant), solitary or corymbose, rarely in elongated clusters
• Involucre ovoid or globose; bracts generally with fimbriate-ciliate or lacerate, variously shaped appendages
• Receptacle nearly flat, often fleshy, densely setose
• Florets with outer row of florets neuter, inner bisexual; corolla purple, blue, yellow or white, tube slender below, dilated above, deeply 5-lobed, papillose or hairy; neuter florets sometimes larger
• Anthers with bases sagittate, adjacent lobes connate and drawn out into long or short, entire or lacerate tail; filaments papillose or hairy
• Style abruptly thickened below branches and there furnished with ring of hairs; branches erect, connate, shortly bifid, lanceolate or linear, obtuse
• Cypselas obovoid-oblong or obconical, somewhat compressed, glabrous or sparsely pilose; attachment scar lateral and oblique
• Pappus generally double, outer row of scabrid, barbellate or plumose bristles or subulate scales, inner row or entire pappus rarely 0
• x = 9 (7, 8, 10, 11) (aneuploids, B-chromosomes, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• *Centaurea L.
  • Linnaeus: 909 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 389 (1754)
  • Oliver & Hiern: 436 (1877)
  • Phillips: 849 (1951)
  • Hilliard: 580 (1977)
  • Bremer: 151 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 450, mainly in the Mediterranean region and Near East
• Southern Africa: Species 5 as introduced weeds, known from North-West, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, Free State, KwaZulu-Natal, Northern, Western and Eastern Cape