Annual to perennial, variously hairy or glandulose to glabrous, stout, upright to ± spreading, spiny robust herbs or occasionally perennial shrublets. Leaves alternate, mostly sessile, entire to dentate or 1 – 3-pinnatifid to pinnatisect, lobes spinescent, leathery, larger and wider near the base of stem. Capitula numerous, deciduous, single-flowered, sessile, aggregated into dense globose or ellipsoid compound capitula (synflorescence or pseudocephalia) or heads, these subtended by common involucre of small, narrow, reflexed bracts concealed under the heads below common receptacle. Each capitulum has its own involucre (termed partial involucre) consisting of basal series of numerous, white bristles or narrow paleae (called pencils) and of inner, 3-5-series of persistent, leathery, green, purple or bluish-violet phyllaries; outer narrow below, narrowly spathulate above, ± fimbriate at apices, white setose internally; median phyllaries broadly winged, spinescent, some phyllaries transformed into long spines (capitula with long spines – cornigerous capitula); innermost 5, free or basally united to form a leathery tube, linear-subulate or acerose at the apices. Florets bisexual, perfect, tubular, actinomorphic. Corolla violet, blue, red, greenish-white, white, tube cylindric, limb campanulate, broad, with 5, denticulate, long linear lobes. Anthers bluish-grey, with setose hairy basal appendages, filaments glabrous. Style with a ring of minute hairs below the branches. Cypselas enveloped by persistent involucre, oblong-cylindrical to quadrangular, densely appressed antrorse villose, beakless. Pappus of free to partly connate, eplumose bristles or scales forming a narrow crown, persistent.
A medium-sized genus consisting of ca 120 species, distributed in arid lands, grassy steppes in tropical Africa, Middle East, the Mediterranean basin, temperate regions of Eurasia, Central Asia, Mongolia, and north-eastern China; introduced elsewhere and a few species of Globe Thistles are cultivated. Represented in Pakistan by 14 species.