7. Tribe SENECIONEAE
千里光族 qian li guang zu
Authors: Yilin Chen, Shangwu Liu, Ying Liu, Qiner Yang, Bertil Nordenstam, Irina D. Illarionova, Charles Jeffrey, Hiroshige Koyama & Leszek Vincent
Herbs, annual or perennial, rarely subshrubs, shrubs, or trees. Leaves alternate, sometimes rosulate or opposite, sessile or petiolate, entire to lobed or deeply divided. Capitula arranged in corymbs or racemes, or solitary, heterogamous and radiate or disciform, or homogamous and discoid; plants sometimes dioecious. Phyllaries 1- or 2(or rarely pluri)-seriate, free or connate, outer row of bracts (calyculus) smaller, or absent. Receptacle flat or raised, rarely conical, naked or alveolate. Ray florets female, radiate or shortly tubular; styles 2-lobed. Disk florets bisexual or functionally male; corolla tubular, or with limb funnelform or campanulate, 4- or 5-lobed; stamens 4 or 5, anthers basally rounded, acute, or sagittate, sometimes caudate; style bifid, style branches flat with entire or divided stigmatic area inside, sometimes sterile or entire, apically truncate, obtuse, or rounded to conical, sometimes appendaged or with tufts of hair penicillate, glabrous or papillate to hirsute, with or without apical sweeping hairs; endothecial cell wall thickenings radial or polarized or transitional, antheropodium straight and uniform or dilated toward base. Achene cylindric or terete-angular to ellipsoid-oblong or sometimes flattened, ribbed or smooth, glabrous, glandular, or pubescent. Pappus 1- to many seriate, bristles few or numerous or 0, rarely absent from all florets, white or colored, persistent or caducous. Pollen "senecioid" or sometimes "helianthoid."
About 150-170 genera and ca. 3,500 species: worldwide; 23 genera (four endemic, three introduced), and 464 species (315 endemic, six introduced) in China.
This is a major tribe in the Asteraceae. Nordenstam (in Kadereit & C. Jeffrey, Fam. Gen. Vasc. Pl. 8: 208-241. 2007) recognized 151 genera, and, more recently, Nordenstam et al. estimated the number to around 160 (in V. A. Funk et al., Syst. Evol. Biogeogr. Compositae, 503-525. 2009). Some new genera have recently been added and a few more will be published, so the number will probably increase to ca. 170. Subtribal classification is problematic. Sometimes only two or three subtribes are recognized, viz., Senecioninae, Tussilagininae, and Blennospermatinae Rydberg. The latter is better included in the Tussilagininae, except for Abrotanella Cassini, which should be treated as a monogeneric subtribe, Abrotanellinae (Robinson et al., Ann. Missouri Bot. Gard. 84: 893-906. 1997; Nordenstam et al., loc. cit.). A satisfactory subtribal classification would probably recognize ca. eight subtribes, but it has not yet been produced. The Chinese members of the tribe Senecioneae are here provisionally divided into three subtribes: Tussilagininae (Cassini) Dumortier, Tephroseridinae C. Jeffrey & Y. L. Chen, and Senecioninae (Cassini) Dumortier (Farfugium, Ligularia, and Cremanthodium were treated in Senecioninae in FRPS (77(2): 1-171. 1989) but are here referred to the Tussilagininae). Twenty-three genera with 463 species are recorded in the present treatment. Plants in some genera have economic value, such as Gynura, Ligularia, Parasenecio, Petasites, and Tussilago, which are used medicinally. Several genera are well known in horticulture (Doronicum, Euryops (Cassini) Cassini, Farfugium, Kleinia Miller, Ligularia, Parasenecio, Pericallis, Senecio, Sinacalia, Steirodiscus Lessing, etc.).
