Glaucous annual or perennial herbs, glabrous or hairy. Leaves alternate, mostly radical, petiolate, often pinnatifid, cauline leaves few, clasping at base. Heads long pedunculate, solitary or in loose corymbs, nodding before anthesis, homogamous, discoid, without ligulate florets. Involucre tubular, without braceoles at base, bracts in 1 series, equal, elongate after anthesis. Receptacle flat, glabrous. Florets yellow or red, bisexual, fertile, corolla limb elongate, 5-lobed. Anthers with narrow appendage at apex, obtuse at base. Style arms appendaged, short strigose at apex. Achenes 5-angled or ribbed, truncate at both ends. Pappus of copious white, soft, slender, scabrous bristles.
About 90 species in tropical Asia and Africa, some naturalized in America; two species in Taiwan.
- F. R. & M. H. Sachet. 1980. Flora of Micronesia, 4: Compositae. Emilia. Smithsonian Contr. Bot. 46: 38-40.
- Nicolson, D. H. 1980. Summary of cytological information on Emilia and the taxonomy of four Pacific taxa of Emilia (Asteraceae: Senecioneae). Syst. Bot. 5(4): 391-407.
