Annual or perennial, strongly aromatic herbs or semi-shrubs. Leaves alternate, pinnatifid or pinnatisect. Capitula radiate, disciform or discoid, pedunculate, solitary or in lax corymbs. Receptacle conical or elongated-conical, fistular, punctate-alveolate, chaffy, paleae flat or mostly canaliculated, often with a central resin canal, glabrous or abaxially pilose. Ray-florets female, fertile or sterile, with white or yellow ligules. Disc-florets with 5-lobed, in fruit basally adaxially saccate, long corolla tube. Cypselas obovoid, with 1 adaxial and 2 lateral very thin ribs with vascular strands, thin-walled and covered with myxogenic cells in longitudinal rows. Pappus absent.

A small genus of 6 species, distributed in Canaries, N Africa, S Europe to Middle East (around the Mediterranean); introduced and naturalized elsewhere. Represented in our area by the following species.

Lower Taxon

• Chamaemelum nobile (L.) All.