Description:

• Annual, biennial or perennial herbs, glabrous, with milky latex
• Stems erect or prostrate, simple or branched
• Leaves mostly in rosettes, sinuate, coarsely toothed or pinnatifid
• Capitula ligulate, few- to several-flowered, pedunculate or occasionally sessile, solitary or in lax, irregular corymbs, or clustered
• Involucres campanulate or cylindrical; bracts in 2 to several rows, becoming ± swollen and corky towards base, innermost subequal, usually exceeding outer
• Receptacle epaleate
• Florets bisexual, fertile; corolla yellow, strap-shaped; tube slender, cylindric; ligule short, 4- or 5-toothed
• Anthers sagittate at base, auricles acute or shortly setaceous-acuminate; with lanceolate, apical appendage
• Style linear, terete, and pubescent above, with linear, obtuse or subobtuse branches, sweeping hairs long
• Cypselas usually ellipsoid-fusiform or terete, often somewhat compressed, ribbed, sometimes apically attenuate or beaked, rugose or verrucose, rough or smooth
• Pappus of bristles in many rows, or of bristles intermixed with many down-like hairs
• x = 9 (4, 6, 7, 8, 13) (polyploidy, B-chromosomes)

Nomenclature:

• Launaea Cass.
  • Cassini: 321 (1822)
  • Harvey: 527 (1865) under Microrhynchus
  • Oliver & Hiern: 460 (1877)
  • Hilliard: 619 (1977)
  • Pope: 214 (1992)
  • Bremer: 188 (1994)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 30, Canary Islands, Mediterranean region, East Asia, Africa and Madagascar
• Southern Africa: Species 4, widespread