Description:

• Annual or perennial herbs
• Leaves alternate, subspathulate to broadly ovate or lanceolate in upper part, apex shortly acuminate or attenuate, narrowly petiolate
• Capitula discoid, many in large terminal panicle
• Involucre campanulate; bracts linear-lanceolate or subulate to lorate, often with greenish outer surface and purplish margins
• Disc flowers bisexual; corolla pinkish or pale mauve, narrowly funnel-shaped, with 1 row of eglandular trichomes and capitate glands
• Anthers calcarate; with ovate, obtuse or acute apical appendages; endothecial tissue with horizontal and radial walls thickened; filament collars narrowly cylindrical, elongate, straight and not wider than filaments
• Style base conspicuously ring-like with cells thickened, cells ± rectangular, 1-5 in a row
• Cypselas subfusiform, terete, not ribbed, narrowed below, uniformly strigulose pubescent; ovary wall crystals narrowly elongate, hexagonal in surface view and rectangular in side view
• Pappus in 2 rows; outer of distinct, short, linear, fimbriate scales, sometimes 0; inner of white, barbellate, caducous bristles

Nomenclature:

• *Cyanthillium Blume
  • Blume: 889 (1826)
  • Robinson: 250 (1990)
  • Pope: 143 (1992)
  • Bremer: 219 (1994)
  • Isawumi: 11 (1995)
• Vernonia sect. Tephrodes DC.
  • Candolle: 24 (1836).
• Vernonia subsect. Tephrodes (DC.) S.B.Jones
  • Jones: 70 (1981).
• Seneciodes L. ex Post & O.Kuntze
  • Post & Kuntze: 515 (1903)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 3, tropical Africa, Madagascar, tropical Asia
• Southern Africa: Species 1: *Cyanthillium cinereum (L.) H.Robinson, introduced pantropical weed, Northern Province and KwaZulu-Natal