Annual to perennial, erect herbs with spiny winged stems and shoots, formed by decurrent leaf bases. Leaves alternate, often decurrent, basal rosulate, pinnatilobed−pinnately parted or pinnatesect, mostly spinose−dentate or serrate, hairy to glabrous. Capitula homogamous, long peduncled or subsessile, globose, oblong or hemispherical, campanulate, cylindrical or ovoid, solitary at the shoot apices, corymbose or in clusters, discoid. Receptacle flat to convex, densely bristly. Involucre multiseriate, imbricate, more or less flat or convex outside, adpressed, patent or reflexed, sometimes geniculately constricted in the mid region. Outer and median phyllaries long spinose acuminate, rarely muticous, ± scarious−margined, glabrous to arachnoid hairy, innermost membranous, acute or obtuse, usually not spinose, fimbriate−toothed. Florets few (10−15) or more (−100), bisexual, actinomorphic or zygomorphic, red, purple, or pink, rarely pale white. Corolla tube slender, limb unequally or equally 5−lobed, with one lobe separated by deeper slit (± longer than the others). Anthers sagittate, with entire or lacerate basal appendages; filaments free and pilose in middle. Cypselas obovoid−oblong, ± terete, glabrous, smooth, olive−grayish, bright−or dark brown, with or without longitudinal striations, rimmed at apices, usually with an apical, indistinctly 5−lobed, small caruncle and basal hilum. Pappus multiseriate, bristles unequal, scabrous, smooth to serrulate, basally united into a ring, deciduous as a whole.
A medium sized genus, comprising nearly 90 species, distributed in Mediterranean region extending to Central Asia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and China; introduced in America and Australia. Represented in Pakistan by 8 species.