Lilac tasselflower

Emilia sonchifolia (L.) DC. ex Wight (Asteraceae) is a slender annual herb pantropical in distribution and naturalised in disturbed ground, gardens, and field margins across Asia, Africa, and the Americas, growing 15–60 cm tall from a fibrous root system. Stems are erect, branching, glabrous to sparsely hairy, and often purplish below. Lower leaves are lyrate-pinnatifid with a large terminal lobe and few small lateral lobes, 4–10 cm long, on winged petioles that clasp the stem; upper leaves are reduced and sessile-auriculate. Inflorescences are loose corymbs of narrowly cylindric heads about 1.5 cm long, each enclosed in a single row of slender green involucral bracts and bearing 30–60 lilac, pink, or pale-purple tubular florets with conspicuously exserted purple style branches; ray florets are absent. Achenes are linear-oblong, ribbed, and crowned by an abundant pure-white pappus of capillary bristles.