Description:

• Perennial herbs, usually hairy, sometimes aromatic
• Leaves alternate, usually pinnatisect
• Capitula radiate, small, in corymbs
• Involucre ovoid or campanulate, rarely subglobose; bracts in few rows, outer shorter than inner, margins scarious
• Receptacle nearly flat, convex or elongated, paleate
• Ray florets female, fertile; corolla strap-shaped, usually short and broad; tube ± flattened; white, yellow or rosy
• Disc florets bisexual, fertile, white or yellow; tube usually compressed, 2-winged below, dilated above, 5-toothed
• Anthers ecalcarate and ecaudate, with ovate apical appendage
• Style branches linear, truncate, penicillate
• Cypselas oblong or obovate, strongly compressed, with 2 lateral ribs
• Pappus 0
• x = 9 (aneuploids, high polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• *Achillea L.
  • Linnaeus: 896 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 382 (1754)
  • Hilliard: 344 (1977)
  • Bremer & Humphries: 128 (1993)
  • Bremer: 462 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species 115, Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, Australia and New Zealand
• Southern Africa: Species 1: *Achillea millefolium L., naturalised as weed, Botswana, Gauteng, Mpumalanga, KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape