Centipeda Lour.

Annual or facultatively perennial herbs, glandular and aromatic. Leaves alternate, cauline, sessile, toothed to entire, glandular-punctate, glabrous to densely cottony. Inflorescences mostly terminal and solitary, but appearing axillary by sympodial growth of subtending shoots, rarely racemose or truly axillary. Capitula heterogamous, sessile to shortly pedunculate, globular, biconvex, hemispherical, cup-shaped or campanulate; involucral bracts in c. 2 rows, herbaceous, with margins membranous; receptacle slightly concave to distinctly convex, glabrous, epaleate, with pithy tissue present to some degree below surface. Outer florets female; corolla tubular, narrowed above and minutely 3-lobed, green to yellow-green, glandular; style branches linear, glabrous. Inner florets bisexual; corolla funnelform, 4-lobed, sometimes purplish, glandular; anthers shortly tailed, sometimes with short ovate apical appendages; style branches oblong, broadly rounded and papillose apically. Achenes of female and bisexual florets similar, clavate to cylindric, 4–6 (–16)-ribbed, mostly with a swollen, pithy or spongy apical portion; glandular trichomes generally present between ribs; eglandular hairs usually present along ribs, acute and straight or tightly inrolled at apex. Pappus absent.

Centipeda has been used in traditional medicines and as a type of snuff (hence the common name sneezeweed) in India, China and Australia. Latz (1995) reported the use of C. minima, C. cunninghamii and C. thespidioides by Central Australian aborigines for the treatment of colds, and as a pituri substitute when wild tobacco is unavailable. Recently named C. crateriformis, C. nidiformis and C. pleiocephala, previously included within the above three species, are probably used in similar ways. In south-eastern Australia, an infusion of C. cunninghamii is still used in aboriginal medicine as a general tonic and for the treatment of colds and other chest complaints, including tuberculosis, and for skin complaints (Zola & Gott 1992).