24. Crepis, Linn.

Annual or perennial branched or rarely scapigerous herbs, juice milky. Leaves radical or alternate, entire or toothed or pin-natifid. Heads peduncled, solitary or panicled or corymbose, yellow or red, homogamous. Involucre campanulate or cylindric; bracts many, linear, equal, with a few smaller ones at their base. Receptacle flat or slightly concave, naked or fimbrillate. Florets all ligu-late. Achenes linear-oblong, 10–20-ribbed, narrowed or beaked at the tip. Pappus short or long, usually copious; hairs soft, white, simple.

A large genus, containing about 130 species, most abundant in the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere, but extending also into subtropical districts. The single New Zealand species is a somewhat anomalous member of the genus; it was referred to Hieracium by Banks and Solander, to Crepis by. Hooker, and to Sonchus in the "Genera Plantarum."