stylistic:tone, structural:scholar_edition
Floral heads

In plants of the Asteraceae, what appears to be a single "daisy"-type flower is actually a composite of several much smaller flowers, known as the capitulum or head. By visually presenting as a single flower, the capitulum functions in attracting pollinators, in the same manner that other "showy" flowering plants in numerous other, older, plant families have evolved to attract pollinators. The previous name for the family, Compositae, reflects the fact that what appears to be a single floral entity is in fact a composite of much smaller flowers.

The "petals" or "sunrays" in an "asteraceous" head are in fact individual strap-shaped flowers called ray flowers or ray florets, and the "sun disk" is made up of smaller, radially symmetric, individual flowers called disc flowers or disc florets. The word aster means "star" in Greek, referring to the appearance of most family members as a " celestial body with rays".The capitulum, which often appears to be a single flower, is often referred to as a head. In some species, the entire head is able to pivot its floral stem in the course of the day to track the sun (like a "smart" solar panel), thus maximizing the reflectivity of the entire floral unit and further attracting flying pollinators.

Nearest to the flower stem lie a series of small, usually green, scale-like bracts. These are known as phyllaries; collectively, they form the involucre, which serves to protect the immature head of florets during its development. The individual florets are arranged atop a dome-like structure called the receptacle.

The individual florets in a head consist, developmentally, of five fused petals (rarely four); instead of sepals, they have threadlike, hairy, or bristly structures, known collectively as a pappus, (plural pappi). The pappus surrounds the ovary and can, when mature and attached to a seed, adhere to animal fur or be carried by air currents, aiding in seed dispersal. The whitish, fluffy head of a dandelion, commonly blown on by children, consists of numerous seeds resting on the receptacle, each seed attached to its pappus. The pappi provide a parachute-like structure to help the seed travel from its point of origin to a more hospitable site.

A ray flower is a two- or three-lobed, strap-shaped, individual flower, found in the head of most members of the Asteraceae. The corolla of the ray flower may have two tiny, vestigial teeth, opposite to the three-lobed strap, or tongue, indicating its evolution by fusion from an ancestral, five-part corolla. In some species, the 3:2 arrangement is reversed, with two lobes, and zero or three tiny teeth visible opposite the tongue.

A ligulate flower is a five-lobed, strap-shaped, individual flower found in the heads of certain other asteraceous species. A ligule is the strap-shaped tongue of the corolla of either a ray flower or of a ligulate flower. A disk flower (or disc flower) is a radially symmetric individual flower in the head, which is ringed by the ray flowers when both are present. In some species, ray flowers may be arranged around the disc in irregular symmetry, or with a weakly bilaterally symmetric arrangement.