e-Key <span id="jodit_selection_marker_1707917568095_22503048045183394" data-jodit_selection_marker="start" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>v3 - Crassocep<span id="jodit_selection_marker_1707917568095_7779216555782462" data-jodit_selection_marker="end" style="line-height: 0; display: none;"></span>halum
SANBI Flora Keys Logo
Interactive keys to the identification of seed plants of southern Africa using keys based on plant morphology.

Asteraceae - Senecioneae - Crassocephalum Moench

Description:

  • Perennial herbs, erect or climbing, or sometimes subshrubs, glabrous or hispid-pubescent
  • Leaves alternate, entire to pinnately dissected, margins dentate
  • Capitula discoid, solitary to corymbose, pedunculate, few- to many-flowered
  • Involucre oblong or campanulate, calyculate; bracts in 1 row, free, with membranous margin
  • Receptacle flat, epaleate
  • Disc florets bisexual, fertile; corolla yellow, red or blue; tube expanded above, with 5 linear to lanceolate lobes
  • Anthers linear, ecalcarate and ecaudate, with lanceolate or deltoid apical appendage; endothecial tissue radial
  • Style branches linear, truncate, penicillate, tipped with well-defined subulate appendage of fused papillae
  • Cypselas cylindric, ribbed
  • Pappus of many, fine, white bristles
  • x = 10 (polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

  • Crassocephalum Moench
    • Moench: 516 (1794)
    • Moore: 209 (1912)
    • Merxmüller: 45 (1967)
    • Hilliard: 368 (1977)
    • Bremer: 499 (1994)
  • Senecio L. in part
    • Harvey: 346 (1865).
  • Gynura Cass. in part
    • Phillips: 832 (1951)

Distribution & Notes:

  • Global: Species 24, Africa, Madagascar, Mascarene Islands, Yemen
  • Southern Africa: Species 5, widespread in summer-rainfall parts but absent from North-West and Free State

References:

  • BREMER, K. 1994. Asteraceae, cladistics & classification. Timber Press, Portland, Oregon
  • HARVEY, W.H. 1865. Compositae. Flora capensis 3
  • HILLIARD, O.M. 1977. Compositae in Natal. University of Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg
  • MERXMÜLLER, H. 1967. Asteraceae. Prodromus einer Flora von Südwestafrika 139
  • MOENCH, C. 1794. Methodus plantas. Nova libraria academiae, Marburg
  • MOORE, S. LE M. 1912. The genus Crassocephalum Moench. Journal of Botany 50
  • PHILLIPS, E.P. 1951. The genera of South African flowering plants, edn 2. Memoirs of the Botanical Survey of South Africa No. 25