Herbs or rarely shrubs, annual or perennial. Leaves alternate, entire, toothed, lobed
or pinnatifid. Heads heterogamous. rayed (very rarely disciform) terminal, long
peduncled, or smaller and corymbose, hemispheric or broader, large. Involucral bracts
many-seriate, broad, appressed with coloured margins. Receptacle naked. Ray florets
female, 1-seriate, fertile; ligule white, yellow or rosy, spreading. Disc florets
hermarphrodite, fertile, tube terete or 2-winged; limb 4 - 5-fid. Anther bases obtuse,
entire. Style arms of hermaphrodite florets with truncate penicillate tips. Achenes
subterete or angled, variously rihbed or winged. Pappus absent or reduced to a cup or
auricle.
Europe, Asia and America. Majority of them cultivated; ca 200 species, 4 in India.
Literature.
HENRY, A. (1902). The wild forms of the Chrysamhemum. Gard. Chron. III, 31: 301 - 302. SMITH, E.D. (1935) Ancient history of the Chrysanthemum. Bull. Chrysanth. Soc. Amer. 3: 6 - 15.
Notes.
Opinions differ with regard to the generic circumscription of Chrysanthemum, Tanacetum and Ajania. Some authors have transferred the species of Chrysanthemum under Tanacetum, while others prefer to retain the genus as such. The latter treatment has been followed here.
KEY TO THE SPECIES
1a. Pappus obscure
2
b. Pappus a large membranous, dimidiate or lobed sheath or coriaceous cup,lobed to the base
3
2a. Rootstock woody; stem branched from the base, puberulous and viscid; ligule spreading
