Ethulia conyzoides

Blue Weed is an annual herb, 0.4-1 m tall, with stems erect, upper parts branched, lower part green or purplish, striped, adpressed finely velvet-hairy or nearly hairless. Flower-heads are borne in branch-end corymbs, often 2 or 3 together in stalkless cluster. Flower-heads are small, florets up to about 30; pale purplish, tubular, 1.2-1.5 mm, glandular; petals lanceshaped. Flower-cluster-stalks is 0-6 mm, densely rusty, finely velvet-hairy. Base of the flower-head is hemispheric at flowering, pinwheel-shaped in fruit, up to 2.5 x 5-7 mm; phyllaries 4- or 5-seriate, nearly equal, ovate or oblong-lanceshaped, about 3 mm, outer and median rusty velvet-hairy and glandular, inner hairless and glandular. Leaves are denser, lowermost withered and shed by flowering, median leaves oblong or oblong-lanceshaped, 5-9 x 1.5-2.5 cm, both surfaces gland-dotted, lateral veins 7- or 8-paired, above rather prominent, base wedge-shapedly narrowed into short leaf-stalk, margin almost entire to distantly coarsely sawtoothed, tip tapering or pointed. Upper leaves are smaller, shallowly sawtoothed or almost entire. Blue Weed is found by ponds and rice fields, at altitudes of 600-1400 m, in Africa to Sinai, Indian Subcontinent to China and Peninsula Malaysia, Taiwan to Philippines. It is also found in East Himalaya. Flowering: April-May.