295. Lagascea Cavanilles, Anales Ci. Nat. 6: 331. 1803.
Doll’s-head, acuate, silk-leaf, velvet-bush [For Mariano Lagasca y Segura, Spanish botanist at the Madrid Botanical Garden]
Elizabeth M. Harris
Shrubs [annuals, perennials], to 50–100[–300] cm. Stems erect [ascending to decumbent], branched from bases or ± throughout. Leaves cauline ; opposite; petiolate [sessile]; blades 3-nerved, lance-ovate to ovate [lanceolate to oblanceolate], bases broadly cuneate [to subauriculate], margins ± serrate, faces usually sericeous to strigose or glabrate, often stipitate-glandular. Heads discoid, borne in headlike glomerules (of [8–]30–50+, 1(–2)[–8]-flowered heads, glomerules borne singly or in ± corymbiform [racemiform] arrays). Involucres cylindric, 1–2 mm diam. (glomerules of heads usually subtended by leaves or ± foliaceous bracts). Phyllaries persistent, 4–5[–8+] in ± 1 series (linear-attenuate, proximally connate, often 1 or more with 1[–3+] glands in abaxial face). Receptacles convex (often hirtellous), rarely paleate (paleae linear). Ray florets 0. Disc florets 1(–2)[–8], bisexual, fertile; corollas yellow [white, pink, or red], tubes shorter than cylindric to campanulate throats, lobes 5, lance-linear to lance-ovate [rounded-deltate] (often hairy). Cypselae (brown to black) narrowly cylindric to obovoid or clavate (faces glabrous or pilosulous, minutely grooved); pappi ± coroniform. x = 17.
Species 8 (1 in the flora): sw United States, Mexico, Central America (to Nicaragua); introduced in West Indies, South America, Asia (India, Java, Sri Lanka, Thailand), Africa, Pacific Islands (Hawaii).
Lagascea mollis Cavanilles, now a nearly pantropical weed, was collected at Apalachicola, Franklin County, Florida (Chapman, n.d., presumably ca. 1860), evidently from an ephemeral population, probably from ballast.
SELECTED REFERENCES
Harris, E. M. 1994. Developmental evidence for the derivation of syncephalia in Lagascea (Heliantheae; Asteraceae). Amer. J. Bot. 81: 1139–1148. Stuessy, T. F. 1976. A systematic review of the subtribe Lagasceinae (Compositae, Heliantheae). Amer. J. Bot. 63: 1289–1294. Stuessy, T. F. 1978. Revision of Lagascea (Compositae, Heliantheae). Fieldiana, Bot. 38: 75–133.
