Pseudanthium
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A pseudanthium is an inflorescence that resembles a flower. The word is sometimes used for other structures that are neither a true flower nor a true inflorescence. Examples of pseudanthia include flo
What appear to be "petals" of an individual flower, are actually each individual complete ray flowers, and at the center is a dense pack of individual tiny disc flowers. Because the collection has the overall appearance of a single flower, the collection of flowers in the head of this sunflower is called a pseudanthium or a composite.
Peace Lily (Spathiphyllum cochlearispathum) pseudanthium
compressed pseudanthia of Lepironia articulata
Euphorbia caput-medusae 01
Asteraceae
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Asteraceae is a large family of flowering plants that consists of over 32,000 known species in over 1,900 genera within the order Asterales. The number of species in Asteraceae is rivaled only by the
Pseudanthium
…itself can sometimes be quite large (as in the heads of some varieties of sunflower). Pseudanthia are characteristic of the daisy and sunflower family (Asteraceae), whose flowers are differentiated into ray flowers and disk flowers, unique to this family. The disk flowers in the center of the pseudanthium are…
Asteracea poster 3
A typical Asteraceae flower head, showing the (five) individual ray florets and the (approximately 16) disk florets of Bidens torta specimen
Discoid flowerheads of Delairea odorata
Dandelions on an alpine slope in Switzerland