Annuals [perennials, subshrubs, or shrubs], [3-]20-200 cm. Stems erect [creeping], branched. Leaves mostly cauline; opposite (distal sometimes alternate); sessile; blades rhombic to lanceolate or oblanceolate [spatulate], margins entire or serrate, faces glabrous or puberulent to pilose, gland-dotted (at least abaxial). Heads radiate, in corymbiform arrays [borne singly]. Involucres campanulate [hemispheric], [8-]10-15[-20] mm diam. Phyllaries persistent, 10-13 in 2 series (distinct, outer 5-6+ oblong, herbaceous, inner narrower, more scarious). Receptacles conic to hemispheric, paleate (paleae oblong to lanceolate, plane [cucullate], membranous to scarious). Ray florets 6-18, pistillate, fertile; corollas yellow (hairy at bases of tubes). Disc florets 100+, bisexual, fertile; corollas yellow, tubes cylindric (hairy), shorter than campanulate throats, lobes 5, deltate. Cypselae weakly compressed, 3-4-angled, glabrous (shining); pappi 0. x = 15.

Taxonomic affinities of Guizotia generally have been acknowledged as obscure; the genus has been placed in Coreopsidinae, Melampodiinae, Milleriinae, and Verbesininae.

Heads radiate, the rays pistillate and fertile, yellow; invol bracts few, subherbaceous, uniseriate; receptacle convex or conic, its bracts flat or nearly so, membranous or subscarious, striate, subtending rays as well as disk-fls; disk-fls perfect and fertile, the cor densely woolly below the middle; style-branches flattened, with subulate, hairy appendage; achenes glabrous, ±compressed parallel to the invol bracts, often also quadrangular; pappus none; annuals with opposite (or the upper alternate) simple lvs and campanulate or subhemispheric heads. 12, trop. Afr.

Gleason, Henry A. & Cronquist, Arthur J. 1991. Manual of vascular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. lxxv + 910 pp.

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