Asteraceae tribe Gnaphalieae
M. QAISER & RUBINA ABID
Department of Botany, University of Karachi, Karachi-75270, Pakistan
Herbs or small shrubs, mostly woolly tomentose. Leaves alternate or opposite, sessile or stalked with flat, involute or revolute margins. Capitula solitary or in groups, disciform, discoid rarely radiate; phyllaries 1-multiseriate, entirely scarious, hyaline, white, pink, purple or yellow to herbaceous with scarious margins, stereome divided or undivided. Receptacle flat or ± convex, mostly epaleate, rarely paleate. Outer florets often missing, usually filiform, or radiate when present, bisexual in 1-many rows, usually outnumbering the disc florets, disc florets either perfect or functionally male. Anthers ecalcarate, mostly caudate, rarely ecaudate (Phagnalon), apical appendages often demarcated from the connective, ovate, sometimes oblong, cordate or concave. Style usually with oblong-linear, truncate hairs restricted to upper portion of branch and very often concentrated at the apices of the branches, rarely on the shaft below the branches, hairs obtuse, stigmatic areas in two separate lines. Cypselas small, hairy, sometimes papillose, oblong to obovoid; mostly pappose, rarely epappose pappus mostly monomorphic made up of capillary setae, setae barbellate, rarely plumose; sometimes dimorphic with scales and setae.
A large tribe with 182 genera and more than 2000 species, cosmopolitan in distribution but mostly in southern hemisphere such as southern Australia and Africa. Represented in Pakistan by 12 genera and 45 species.
