Rafinesquia coccinea

Interesting Facts

Description

Family Compositae

The largest family of flowering plants , the Compositae (Asteraceae), comprising about 1,100 genera and more than 20,000 species and characterized by many small flowers arranged in a head looking like a single flower and subtended by an involucre of bracts. A head may consist of both ray flowers and disk flowers, as in the sunflower, of disk flowers only, as in the burdock, or of ray flowers only, as in the dandelion.

Genus Rafinesquia

Annuals , 15-150 cm. taprooted. Stems 1-3. erect . simple or distally branched (hollow), glabrous . Leaves basal and cauline; basal petiolate or sessile, blades oblong to oblanceolate , pinnately lobed (lobes broad or narrow) ; cauline sessile, sometimes auriculate clasping , distal smaller, becoming entire and bractlike. Heads (erect) borne singly (at ends of branches) or in open, paniculiform arrays. Involucres cylindro-conic, (4-) 6-15+ mm diam. Calyculi of 8-14, spreading to reflexed , unequal bractlets (lengths to 1/2 phyllaries). Phyllaries 7-20 in 1 series. linear-lanceolate, ± equal, margins scarious , apices acuminate. Receptacles flat, smooth , glabrous, epaleate. Florets 15-30; corollas white, sometimes with rose or purplish veins abaxially (outer surpassing phyllaries). Cypselae tan to mottled grayish brown, fusiform , 9-18(-20) mm, bodies tapering to beaks , ribs or ridges 5, outer usually with antrorse hairs or papillate or scaly indument , inner mostly smooth to cross-rugulose, glabrous; pappi (borne on small discs) ± persistent , of 5-21, white or sordid , ± plumose (at least proximally, barbs sometimes entangled) bristles in 1 series. x = 8.

Species 2: sw United States, nw Mexico.[1]

Taxonomy

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Domain: Eukaryota () - Whittaker & Margulis,1978 - eukaryotes
- Kingdom: Plantae () - Haeckel, 1866 - Plants
  - Subkingdom: Viridaeplantae () - Cavalier-Smith, 1981
    - Phylum: Tracheophyta () - Sinnott, 1935 ex Cavalier-Smith, 1998 - Vascular Plants
      - Subphylum: Euphyllophytina ()
        Class: Spermatopsida () - Brongniart, 1843
        Subclass: Asteridae () - Takhtajan, 1967
        Superorder: Campanulanae () - Takhtajan Ex Reveal, 1992
        Order: Asterales () - Lindley, 1833
        Family: Compositae () - Giseke, 1792, nom. cons., nom. alt.
        Genus: Rafinesquia () - Nuttall, 1841, nom. cons. - Rafinesque's chicory [For Constantin Samuel Rafinesque, 1783-1840, naturalist and polymath who traveled widely in nineteenth-century America]
        Specific epithet: coccinea - Raf.
        Botanical name: - Rafinesquia coccinea Raf.