THE COMPOSITE FAMILY. 167 



Athana'sia, of which genus there are forty species in 

 South Africa {A. parviflo'ra, with clusters, of flat-topped, 

 yellow heads, is very common), all the florets have 

 tubular corollas. 



Sene'cio. — This is an enormous genus of about 900 

 species, some 180 being Cape plants. They vary in 

 size from small herbs to trees. The flowers are yellow 

 or purple. The involucre of the heads is one-seriate, 

 often having the tips of the scales dark, with or 

 without small hractlets at the base. The general 

 receptacle is naked. The style-arms of the disk- 

 florets are truncated. The pappus is of several series 

 of pilose^ slender and roughish hairs. The name is 

 from the Latin seiiex, " an old man," in reference to the 

 white " down," or pappus, on the achenes. A genus, 

 called lUci'nia, closely agrees in its flowers with Senedo, 

 but has fleshy stems for storing water. There are 

 eighteen Cape species. 



One tribe, called Cichorem, after the genus Gichor'ium, 

 which supplies us with Chicory, has all the florets 

 ligulate, but they retain the five petals, as shown in 

 Fig. 69, of the common Sow-thistle {Son duos oUra'ccus), 

 introduced from Europe. 



When the fruit is mature, it forms a one-seeded, 

 inferior achene, with or without a pappus. This may 

 be sessile, i.e. "seated," as in Gei-'bercc and Sun'chus 



^ I.e. of simple hairs. If the hairs branch like a feather, the 

 pappus is said to be plumose (Fig. 71). 



