ABSTRACT
The genus Artemisia is one of the largest and most widely distributed of the nearly 100 genera in the tribe Anthemideae of the Asteraceae (Compositae).
Asteraceae is a natural family, with well established limits and a basic uniformity of floral structure, represented in all its members by the common possession of characters such as aggregation of the flowers into capitula and production of achenes (cypselae) as the typical fruits of the family. The cypsela structure, the presence or not of a pappus, and the capitulum itself, that seems to have evolved in order to simulate an individual flower with respect to pollinator attraction, are all morphological features which have an adaptive significance and whose taxonomic value has been demonstrated in only a few groups such as the Anthemideae and the Cardueae (Heywood et al., 1977).
