Erythrocephalum Benth.

Perennial or rarely annual herbs with leafy stems, or scapose and the leaves all basal. Leaves alternate, petiolate or sessile with a petioloid base, pinnately veined, mostly serrulate. Capitula solitary, few, terminal on the inflorescence branches, sometimes precocious, at first erect, homogamous and discoid or apparently radiate with unequally bilabiate outer florets, these sometimes female-sterile and the capitula heterogamous; phyllaries few-seriate, closely imbricate, the outer laciniate-dentate, the inner entire except at the apices and passing into the receptacle-scales; receptacle mamillate, scaly. Florets all hermaphrodite, all regular or the outer unequally bilabiate and sometimes functionally male; corolla narrowly tubular below, in bilabiate florets with broad deeply 3-toothed or 3-lobed ray-like outer lip and shorter inner lip narrowly 2-lobed to the base, in regular florets narrow in lower half, dilated, campanulate and deeply 5-lobed above; anthers strongly tailed, tails conspicuous, fringed; style branches short to long, obtuse, with a subapical dorsal fringe of hairs. Achenes all similar or those of the ray florets abortive, the fertile achenes inflated, cylindrical, 5-angular, obtusely ribbed on the angles; pappus of a few very caducous flattened barbellate bristles, whitish or tawny.