Flora of North America species comparison

1, erect, branched dichotomously, divaricate (drying brittle).

usually cauline (sometimes mostly basal); usually mostly opposite (distal sometimes alternate), rarely whorled;

petiolate or sessile;

blades (often pinnately or palmately lobed, sometimes compound), or lobes or leaflets, mostly deltate, elliptic, filiform, lanceolate, linear, oblanceolate, or ovate, ultimate margins entire or toothed, faces usually glabrous or glabrate, sometimes hairy (rarely, if ever, gland-dotted).

mostly cauline; opposite; obscurely petiolate;

blades 1(–2)-pedately or -pinnately lobed (lobes filiform), ultimate margins entire, faces glabrous.

mostly campanulate, cylindric, turbinate, or hemispheric or broader.

cylindric to obconic, 1.5–3 mm diam. (larger in fruit).

mostly flat to convex, paleate (paleae often stramineous to white with red-brown to purplish striae, orbiculate to oblong or linear, ± flat to slightly cupped).

slightly convex, paleate;

paleae linear to subulate, scarious.

0 or 1–21+ (more in cultivars), pistillate and fertile, or neuter, or styliferous and sterile;

corollas usually yellow to orange (sometimes bicolored: yellow to orange with brown, red-brown, or purple), sometimes cyanic or white.

3–6, pistillate, fertile;

corollas yellow.

3–150+, usually bisexual, fertile (functionally staminate in Dicranocarpus);

corollas usually yellow to orange, sometimes brown, red-brown, or purple, tubes usually shorter than, sometimes equaling funnelform throats (longer than throats in some Thelesperma spp.), lobes (3–)5, ± deltate to lance-ovate; (staminal filaments hairy in Cosmos) anther thecae pale or dark;

stigmatic papillae in 2 lines.

3–4+, functionally staminate;

corollas yellow, tubes shorter than throats, lobes 5, triangular.

persistent, 3–34+ in ± 2 series (usually distinct, notably connate in Thelesperma), usually ± membranous, margins usually ± scarious.

persistent, 3–6 in 1(–2) series, lance-ovate to lanceolate, scarious, brown-nerved.

usually of 3–8(–21+) bractlets or bracts (usually ± herbaceous, usually shorter than phyllaries and/or reflexed, sometimes ± foliaceous and surpassing phyllaries).

of (0–)1–3+ erect, linear to subulate, herbaceous bractlets.

radiate or discoid, borne singly or in ± corymbiform, cymiform, or paniculiform arrays.

radiate, borne singly or (2–4) in cymiform arrays.

usually either obcompressed to obflattened, usually cuneate, linear, oblong, orbiculate, or ovate (bodies unequally 3–4-angled, margins often winged), or (all or inner) ± equally 4-angled and linear-fusiform, sometimes ± beaked, faces glabrous or hairy (often striate, tuberculate, or papillate);

pappi 0, or persistent, of (1–)2–4(–8), usually ± barbellate awns or scales, rarely coroniform or of 1–2, smooth to ciliate or barbed awns or scales.

obcompressed, oblong to linear, ± ribbed, smooth or tuberculate, glabrous or densely papillate;

pappi persistent, of 2 spreading to recurved, smooth or proximally papillate awns.

= 10.