72. Askellia W. A. Weber, Phytologia. 55: 6. 1984.
假苦菜属 jia ku cai shu
Authors: Zhu Shi & Norbert Kilian
Crepis sect. Ixeridopsis Babcock, Univ. Calif. Publ. Bot. 22: 212. 1947.
Herbs, perennial, usually rather delicate, with a slender taproot and often with shoot-bearing lateral roots. Stems rather low, slender, often branched from base. Leaves in basal rosette or along stem, usually small, with orbicular to obovate and spatulate blade attenuate into a long petiole-like base, glabrous. Synflorescence mostly with rather few capitula. Capitula erect, with 5-15 florets. Involucre narrowly cylindric. Phyllaries in few series, glabrous [or setulose or arachnoid hairy]; outer phyllaries usually less than 1/4, rarely to 1/3, as long as inner ones; inner phyllaries linear-lanceolate, equal. Receptacle naked. Florets yellow or more rarely pale purplish red. Achene usually pale brown, slenderly cylindric to slenderly fusiform, with 10 thin equal ribs, apically truncate, attenuate, or shortly beaked. Pappus white, of scabrid bristles, usually caducous or persistent.
About 11 species: C, NE, and SW Asia, North America; six species (one endemic) in China.
Treatment of Askellia (with a basic chromosome number of x = 7) as a separate genus instead of as a section of Crepis (C. sect. Ixeridopsis) has been corroborated recently both by Sennikov and I. D. Illarionova (Komarovia 5: 57-115. 2008), based, in particular, on carpological investigations, and Enke and Gemeinholzer (Taxon 57: 756-758. 2008), based on molecular phylogenetic analyses, yet with uncertain systematic position. More recently, J. W. Zhang et al. (in prep.) revealed in their molecular phylogenetic analyses of subtribe Crepidinae that Askellia is part of a well-supported clade including Ixeridium, Ixeris, and Taraxacum and sister to a subclade including Ixeris and Ixeridium.
