Family Asteraceae > Subfamily Asteroideae > Tribe Helenieae > Subtribe Gaillardiinae.
Blanket flowers are native to Canada and North and South America.
There are 22 species with two sparingly naturalised in Australia.
The annual or perennial herbs or subshrubs have a taproot or sometimes a rhizome (thickened underground stem).
Plants, up to 80 cm (1 m) high may have a single stem but most branch.
Leaf-bearing stems have long simple hairs.
The alternately arranged leaves are basal and/or along the stems.
They have a long or short hairy petiole or are directly attached with a base that may clasp the stem.
Blade shapes vary greatly with some being narrow elliptic to lance-shaped.
Edges can be smooth, toothed or shallow to deeply lobed.
The upper surface is green and the lower a pale grey-green.
There are hairs on both surfaces and most have glands.
Solitary terminal inflorescences (heads or capitula) are on a long hairy peduncle.
The receptacle is the swollen top of the peduncle above the insertion of flowers.
In Gaillardia it is slightly to markedly convex.
The scales (paleae) or hairs scattered on it can be soft but are typically stiff.
Around the base of the heads are 2 or 3 series of involucral bracts or phyllaries.
The green bracts spread out or curve back.
They have a pointed tip and hairs.
Heads may have only fertile flowers (discoid heads) or a mix of sterile and fertile (radiate heads).
The small flowers are called florets.
Overall the heads can look like a single large flower.
Typical heads have an outer ring of ray florets around densely packed disc florets.
Ray florets are mostly infertile but in a few species they are fertile females.
Sunken into the receptacle, and surround by paleae they consist of a tube with 5 lobes.
All lobes may be similar or one, the ligule is much larger than the others.
The wedge or fan-shaped ligule has 3 (2 or 4) small lobes on the tip.
Florets can be a single colour or a mix.
The main colours are various shades of yellow, orange and red.
Other colours include purple, burgundy, brown and white.
The many disc florets, with no pedicel have paleae at the base.
Their tubular base has 5 similar small teeth or lobes.
There are simple hairs on the tips of the lobes and glandular ones on the outer surface.
Flowers are yellow, red, brown or purple.
The 5 stamens are inserted onto the corolla tube between the lobes.
The filaments are free and the anthers are joined together around the style.
The anthers have an apical appendage and there may be one at the base.
The inferior ovary, of 2 fused carpels has one locule with one ovule.
The style has 2 short flat branches with a linear stigma that may have small hairs.
The fruit resemble achenes (from a superior ovary) but are actually a cypsella from an inferior ovary.
The dry indehiscent obconical fruit are partly or wholly covered in hairs or scales.
This pappus has up to 10 scales with a barbed tip.
J.F.
