Centaurea
genus of plants
Centaurea () is a genus of over 700 species of herbaceous thistle-like flowering plants in the family Asteraceae. Members of the genus are found only north of the equator, mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere; the Middle East and surrounding regions are particularly species-rich.
Common names
Common names for this genus are centaury, centory, starthistles, knapweeds, centaureas and the more ambiguous bluets; a vernacular name used for these plants in parts of England is loggerheads (common knapweed). The Plectocephalus group – possibly a distinct genus – is known as basketflowers. Cornflower is used for a few species, but that term more often specifically means either C. cyanus (the annual cornflower) or Centaurea montana (the perennial cornflower). The common name centaury is sometimes used, although this also refers to the unrelated plant genus Centaurium.
The name is said to be in reference to Chiron, the centaur of Greek mythology who discovered medicinal uses of a plant eventually called "centaury".
Description
Knapweeds are robust weedy plants. Their leaves, spiny in some species, are usually deeply divided into elongated lobes at least in the plants' lower part, becoming entire towards the top. The "flowers" (actually pseudanthium inflorescences) are diverse in colour, ranging from intense blues, reds and yellows to any mixture of these and lighter shades towards white.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Centaurea” is genus of plants. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Centaurea, genus and plants, not as a finished interpretation.
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This entry incorporates text from “Centaurea” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.