The Stifftioideae are a subfamily of the family

Asteraceae Asteraceae () is a large family (biology), family of flowering plants that consists of over 32,000 known species in over 1,900 genera within the Order (biology), order Asterales. The number of species in Asteraceae is rivaled only by the Orchi ...

family of

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...

s. It comprises a single

tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide use of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. The definition is contested, in part due to conflict ...

, Stifftieae, of ten

genera Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family as used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial s ...

. These plants are vines, shrubs or small trees with thin to leathery, hairless of felty haired leaves with leaf stalks and entire margins, set alternately or rarely oppositely along the branches. The flower heads are at the tip of the branches or rarely in the axils of the leaves, on their own or in open to tightly packed cymes. The

involucre In botany, a bract is a modified or specialized leaf, associated with a reproductive structure such as a flower, inflorescence axis or cone scale. Bracts are usually different from foliage leaves in size, color, shape or texture. They also look ...

may be narrowly cylindrical to half globular, and consists of at least three whorls of overlapping and gradually changing bracts. The common base of the florets (or receptacle) does not carry a bract (or palea) subtending each floret. The florets are all bisexual and may have either a ligulate corolla, a disk corolla, or a bilabiate corolla (three lobes merged to a strap with teeth at the tip and two lobes free much further down), and the lobes may be strongly coiled. The corolla can be yellow, orange, red, white, pink or purple. Like in all asterids, the

anthers The stamen (: stamina or stamens) is a part consisting of the male reproductive organs of a flower. Collectively, the stamens form the androecium., p. 10 Morphology and terminology A stamen typically consists of a stalk called the filamen ...

are fused into a tube, though which the style grows, picking up the pollen that is discarded at the inside of the tube. The anthers have spurs at their base and appendages at their tip. The styles have hairless shafts and mostly hairless branches (sometimes with papillae at the outside). The one-seeded

indehiscent Dehiscence is the splitting of a mature plant structure along a built-in line of weakness to release its contents. This is common among fruits, anthers and sporangia. Sometimes this involves the complete detachment of a part. Structures that ...

fruits (called cypselas) are cylindrical and carry a pappus of many white, straw-colored or bright orange or pink bristles (which may be feather-like). figure 2 illustrates corolla types

References

External links

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Tolweb Stifftioideae
{{Taxonbar, from1=Q15972579, from2=Q141503 Asterales subfamilies