75. Gaillardia Foug. (gaillardia, blanketflower)
Plants annual or
perennial herbs, often with taproots. Stems erect or ascending, few- to
many-branched, with fine longitudinal ridges and grooves, moderately to densely
pubescent with curved or curled hairs, some of the hairs sometimes
gland-tipped. Leaves alternate and sometimes also basal (all basal elsewhere),
long-petiolate to sessile, the base sometimes slightly expanded or clasping the
stem. Leaf blades oblanceolate to oblong or lanceolate, unlobed or with rounded
pinnate lobes, angled or tapered to more or less rounded at the base, rounded
or angled or tapered to a sharply or bluntly pointed tip, the margins otherwise
entire, wavy or toothed, the surfaces densely pubescent with short, curved or
curled hairs, also dotted with sessile to impressed glands, usually somewhat
roughened to the touch. Inflorescences of solitary heads terminal on the
branches, the heads appearing long-stalked. Heads radiate. Involucre cup-shaped
to shallowly cup-shaped, the bracts in 2 or 3 subequal series. Involucral
bracts 15–28, green with a sometimes yellowish base, inconspicuously 1-nerved,
spreading to reflexed at flowering, lanceolate to ovate, sometimes somewhat
concave, the surfaces and margins densely hairy and usually also glandular.
Receptacle strongly convex, often somewhat enlarging as the fruits mature, the
florets usually subtended by numerous bristles, these sometimes fused
irregularly at the base, usually straw-colored, occasionally reduced to a
network of low, irregular teeth. Ray florets 6–15 in 1 series (absent
elsewhere), sterile (lacking stamens and style at flowering and with an ovary
that is shorter and thinner than those of the disc florets, not developing into
a fruit), the corolla relatively broad above a slender base, yellow or red,
brownish red, or reddish purple, at least toward the base, the tubular portion
and often also the ligule with dense, somewhat tangled hairs and also
glandular, not persistent at fruiting. Disc florets 40 to numerous (more than
100), perfect, the corolla 4–7 mm long, yellow, orangish red, purple, or
purplish brown, the tube not expanded at the base or persistent at fruiting, usually
woolly toward the tip, the 5 sharply pointed lobes densely woolly. Style
branches with the sterile tip long-tapered to a sharply pointed tip. Pappus of
6–10 scales, these with a somewhat thickened, orangish brown midnerve and thin,
nearly transparent margins, the lanceolate to ovate basal portion tapered to a
relatively long, awned tip. Fruits somewhat wedge-shaped, more or less
4-angled, the surface densely pubescent with relatively long, yellowish,
ascending hairs, black. Fifteen to 18 species, North America, South America.