Tagetes persicifolia

These features help distinguish Tagetes persicifolia from many other Aster Family species with yellow flowers:

It is a herbaceous shrub or subshrub which is a perennial up to 2 m (6 ft 6+1⁄2 in) tall, with one to a few branching stems rising from the base. Leaves up to 16 cm (6.3 in) long and 2 cm (3⁄4 in) wide arise opposite one another on stems. Blades are hairless but covered with minute glands. Blade margins are finely toothed, and blade bases unite forming a tube around the stem up to 18 mm (3⁄4 in) long. Floral heads arise singly at branch tips and where leaves connect to the stems. Up to 15 "ray florets" along the head's margin have flat, petal-like, yellow corollas up to 15 mm (5⁄8 in) long. These radiate from around the head's "eye," which consists of up to about 50 "disc florets" with yellow, cylindrical corollas. No scale-like bracts, or "paleae" appear among the floret bases. Below floral heads, about 15 slender involucral bracts arranged in a single row have their sides fused together and bear oil-containing glands. Slender, one-seeded, cypsela-type fruits up to 8 mm (5⁄16 in) long are topped by pappuses reduced to a crown of 5 projections only up to 0.4 mm (1⁄32 in) high.

Tagetes persicifolia in endemic only to the Mexican states of Colima, Durango, Guanajuato, Hidalgo, Jalisco, México, Michoacán, Nayarit, Oaxaca and Querétaro.

The origin of the genus name Tagetes is unknown, though it may honor Tages, supposed to be a founding prophet of the Etruscan religion. The species name persicifolia begins with a form of the Latin Persicus, which means "Persian," as reflected in the scientific name for peach trees. Peach trees are Prunus persica, suggesting a Persian origin, because Europeans such as Linnaeus, who formally named the species (as Amygdalus persica), thought that peach trees originated in Persia. However, they are from China. The -folia in the species name is from the Latin folium, mean "leaf." Therefore, if an English name for Tagetes persicifolia were to be coined, surely it would be "Peach-leafed Marigold."