“…The micromorphological characteristics of different plant structures have always been used as complementary tools in recent taxonomical investigations, in addition to the morphological features (Abid & Qaiser, 2009; Barthlott, 1981; Zhu, Qin, & Shih, 2006). The macro and micromorphological characteristics of fruit and pappus have been widely used in systematic evolutionary studies as well as to identify the species at the various taxonomic levels in many flowering plant groups including several tribes of Asteraceae; Anthemideae, Cichorieae, Inuleae, Senecioneae, and Mutisieae (Inceer, Bal, Ceter, & Pinar, 2012; Zhang, Boufford, & Sun, 2013; Karanović, Zorić, Zlatković, Boža, & Luković, 2016; Aksu Kalmuk, Inceer, & Imamoglu, 2018; Özbek, Özbek, & Vural, 2018), and in the tribe Cardueae (Dittrich, 1985; Gavrilović et al, 2020; Ozcan, 2017, 2018; Ozcan & Akinci, 2019). Fruit characteristics such as surface sculpturing are thought to be less influenced by the pressures of environmental conditions than other morphological traits (Barthlott, 1981).…”