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Plant list
Plant list
Asteraceae
Nomenclature
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Unranked: AngiospermClass: Dicotyledon
SUMMARY
Herbs, subshrubs, or shrubs, rarely trees or climbers, bisexual, monoecious, or sometimes dioecious, many with laticiferous cells or canals and/or resinous ducts. Leaves often in a basal rosette; cauline leaves usually alternate, more rarely (in China) opposite or whorled, sessile or petiolate, without stipules; petiole sometimes auriculate at base; leaf blade entire to variously lobed or divided. Florets bisexual (perfect), female (pistillate), or functionally male (functionally staminate), solitary or few to many enclosed in an involucre of 1- to many-seriate phyllaries (involucral bracts) to form a capitulum; calyculus of outer bracts sometimes present and often differing markedly from phyllaries. Capitula solitary or few to many arranged in variously formed synflorescences, homogamous or heterogamous, discoid, disciform, radiate, subradiate, radiant, or ligulate; receptacle usually flattened, sometimes slightly concave or convex, rarely conical, smooth or alveolate, paleate (scaly) or epaleate, with bristles, scales, hairs, or naked. Corolla (3-) 5-merous, gamopetalous, tubular or tubular-filiform, and regular, bilabiate, radiate, or ligulate. Stamens (4 or)5, inserted within corolla tube; filaments adnate to proximal part of corolla; anthers basifixed or dorsifixed, usually coalescent into a tube, base caudate or not, apex with (rarely without) a sterile, ovate or lanceolate appendage; pollen grains usually tricolporate, echinate or sometimes lophate or spinulate, often caveate. Style apically bifid (rarely entire); style branches variously shaped, with or without an apical appendage, hairs, or papillae. Ovary inferior, 1-loculed; ovule 1, basal, anatropous. Fruit an achene (cypsela). Pappus consisting of 1 to many rows of scales or bristles, or absent. Seed erect; endosperm scanty; embryo straight.