Austroflourensia

Austroflourensia is a genus of flowering plants in the family Asteraceae. It includes 12 species of shrubs and subshrubs native to South America, ranging from Peru to southern Argentina, typically on arid and semi-arid lands. Most of the species in this genus were previously included in genus Flourensia, which included both North American and South American species. Molecular phylogenetic and morphological studies found that Flourensia as previously circumscribed was polyphyletic, and in 2023 12 South American species were placed in the new genus Austroflourensia. The species in Austroflourensia are distinguished from the North American species by its shrubby or subshrubby habit, capitula always radiate and usually arranged in weakly cymose-corymbose capitulescences, 2-3-seriate phyllaries, and shortly dentate disc corollas. Austroflourensia is related to the other four genera in subtribe Enceliinae – Encelia, Enceliopsis, Geraea, and Helianthella – while Flourensia s.s. is sister to t......read more on Wikipedia.