Author:
Qjure
Book:
Qjurious
Type:
Info
Chapter:
3-666.32.00
Calyceraceae
Clades: Asterales.
Genera: Acicarpha, Boopis, Calycera, Gamocarpha, Moschopsis, Nastanthus.
Region: southern half of South-America, Argentina, Peru, Chile; Acicarpha tribuloides is introduced, in Florida, a weed along roads.
Taxonomy
There is no information about this family in homeopathy. The placement in the Campanulales suggests a Subphase 7 placement.
Botany
Perennial or annual herbs; similar to Asteraceae and Dipsacaceae.
Stem: few or many branched; without hair or with soft silky hairs. Leaves: alternate; simple, may be lobed to pinnatisect; entire or toothed; rosette at the base of the stems or alternately along the stems; exstipulate.
Inflorescences: flowerheads like sunflowers; at the top of the stems or opposite leaves, and may have a flowerstem or be seated, while each flowerhead may be on its own or in a cyme; leaf-like bracts.
Flowers: flowerhead, conical, convex or sometimes almost spheroidal, surrounded by an involucre of one or two rows of leaf-like bracts, not merged, linear to narrowly lanceolate, green, chaffy scales, become woody when seeds are ripening; flowerhead may contain a few or up to over one hundred hermaphrodite or unisexual, star-symmetric or mirror-symmetric flowers.
Corolla: petals are fused to form a funnel-shaped or sometimes cylinder-shaped corolla, split into four to six lobes at the top, the remains staying on top of the one-seeded dry fruit at maturity.
Androecium: stamens 4 or 5, alternate with the corolla lobes, lower third of these filaments are fused with the corolla tube, sometimes filaments may also be attached to their neighbors, carry nectaries; anthers stand upright, with pollen freed from a slit at the top.
Gynoecium: style is thread-like without hairs, sticking out above the corolla tube, while the stigma at its tip is club-shaped or split in two; ovary of two carpels with only one ovule, pendulous and anatropous.
Fruit: an achene, with a persistent calyx which may consists of spines, contains one seed that is only enclosed by a thin pericarp and has fleshy endosperm.
Calyx: persistent; sepals may be free or fused calyx lobes, sometimes spine-like and woody on the outside.
Dispersion: separately when ripe or can remain on the floral base that breaks free of the plant.