Cotula anthemoides L.

Nile and Mediterranean regions, eastern desert and Sinai.

North Africa to northwest India and southwest China, southwards through Africa, adventive in southern Europe.

Waste moist ground, edges of cultivation, muddy streams and canal banks.

Annual.

The powder of capitula warmed with oil is used as poultice for treatment of rheumatic pain.

Procumbent or decumbent, pale-green, glabrous herb with several, up to 20 cm long branches from the base. Leaves subsessile, petiole semi-amplexicaule, ovate-oblong, (1.5-) 2 – 4 (-5) x 1.5 – 3 (3.5) cm, pinnatifid to 2-pinnatisect with narrowly oblong, serrate, acute ultimate segments. Capitula subglobose, yellow, 4 – 6 mm across, solitary on filiform, 4 – 5 cm long peduncles. Involucre ± saucer shaped, phyllaries narrowly oblong, c. 1 – 1.25 x 0.5 – 0.75 mm, nerved within, membranous-margined, with obtuse scarious apices. Receptacle flat. Outer florets female with an inconspicuous corolla, c. half as long as those of disc-floret corollas, fertile. Disc-florets bisexaul, fertile, with c. 2 mm long, ± campanulate corolla, fertile. Cypselas ovate, c. 1 mm long, narrowly winged, wing c. 0.3 mm, ray-cypselas flat, broader than disc-cypselas, all pale-brown.

Distribution: China, India, Pakistan, W. Arabia, South Africa and Egypt.

Fl. Per.: March-June.

A weed in gardens in the plains and lower altitudes in Western Himalayas.

anthemoides: resembling an Anthemis, another genus in the Asteraceae

Annual, erect or procumbent, herb, to 30 cm. Leaves pinnatisect to 2-pinnatisect with dentate lobes, lanceolate in outline, arachnoid-pubescent when young becoming hairless; base semi-amplexicaul. Capitula solitary, terminal, ± spherical, borne on a short peduncle, 0.6-1.3 cm long. Phyllaries obovate, with scarious margins, borne in 2 rows. Disc florets yellow or pale yellow; outer florets similar to the inner ones, with a corolla; outer florets stalked; inner florets without stalks. Achenes 1.2-1.5 mm long, dorsiventrally flattened, with narrow wings widening above.

Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, southern Africa, Arabia, India and China; a widespread weed in warm regions of the Old World