[1] It has a non‑woody growth form and is typically found growing in Tenerife's laurel forests.

[4][5] In 1895 in a series of letters and articles in The Gardeners' Chronicle and Nature, William Turner Thiselton-Dyer argued that the garden plant Cineraria cruenta was derived by simple breeding from the wild plant Senecio cruentus, while William Bateson argued that it was of hybrid origin.

[5] The argument was resolved by Bateson, who enlisted Richard Irwin Lynch, Curator of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden, to do some experimental crosses in 1897.

[5] In fact, members of the genus Pericallis had been brought to England in 1777 and 1780, and by the early 1800s had been extensively hybridized by horticulturalists.

[4] By the time of the debate, there were numerous cultivars displaying wide morphological variation.