The sunflower or daisy family, one of the largest plant families, including sunflowers, daisies, dandelions, lettuce, and chrysanthemums. Members have composite flower heads made up of many small individual flowers arranged in a disc or ray pattern.
From Latin 'aster' meaning 'star,' referring to the star-like appearance of many flowers in this family. The family was formerly called Compositae, referring to the composite nature of their flower heads made up of many tiny flowers.
Asteraceae flowers are actually flower cities! What looks like a single daisy or sunflower is really hundreds of tiny individual flowers packed together—the 'petals' are actually ray flowers, while the center contains dozens of disc flowers, each capable of producing its own seed.
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