Annual or occasionally perennial, glandular and villous lanate to arachnoid spiny herbs with alternate, pinnatifid to pinnatisect, sometimes entire, marginally spiny leaves; basal leaves larger and more dissected than cauline. Capitula homogamous, discoid, terminal, solitary or laxly corymbose. Involucre subglobose to ovoid. Phyllaries multiseriate, imbricate, outer very spiny, akin to upper cauline leaves, median rarely with appendages, innermost entire, acuminate. Receptacle flat, with a dense cover of bristles. Florets bisexual, slender, pink-purple, violaceous, orange, yellow or white. Anther filaments usually densely hairy. Cypselas strikingly dimorphic, obpyramidate, tetrangular, glabrous, apically rimmed, of outer florets grossly rugose and mostly small; of inner florets large, oblong-obconical, ± smooth. Pappus absent or if present biseriate to multiseriate, sometimes of scales, serrulate-ciliate,  inner basally connate, shorter.

A genus of ca 17, xerophilous weedy species, distributed in Mediterranean region, Middle East to Indo-Pakistan subcontinent and Central Asia. Represented in Pakistan by the following three species.