Description:

• Annual herbs
• Leaves alternate, serrate-dentate and pinnatifid, somewhat amplexicaul
• Capitula radiate, pedunculate, solitary or laxly corymbose, many-flowered
• Involucre campanulate; bracts in 2-4 rows, often with brown, scarious margin and sometimes membranous tip
• Receptacle convex, epaleate
• Ray florets female, fertile; corolla usually white or yellow, tube usually short, with entire or toothed lamina 3 times as long as tube
• Ray cypselas triquetrous, laterally winged
• Disc florets bisexual, fertile or sterile; corolla tube campanulate above, glandular, with 5 ovate lobes sometimes awned on back
• Anthers ecalcarate and ecaudate; with ovate, apical appendage
• Style with swollen base and with oblong, truncate branches
• Disc cypselas prismatic with narrow adaxial wing, or terete with thick undulating wall, thus apparently ribbed
• Pappus 0 in both disc and ray florets
• x = 9 (7, 8, 10, 17, 19) (aneuploids, high polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• *Chrysanthemum L.
  • Linnaeus: 887 (1753)
  • Harvey: 161 (1865)
  • Bremer & Humphries: 135 (1993)
  • Bremer: 465 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 2, Europe, Asia and North Africa
• Southern Africa: Species 2, naturalised: *Chrysanthemum coronarium L. and *C. segetum L., Mpumalanga and Eastern Cape