Annual, erect, herbs or perennial subshrubs.  Stem usually branched. Leaves cauline, sometimes in rosettes, alternate, petiolate or sessile, elliptic, lanceolate, entire to pinnatisect (1–2–lobed), usually hairy and gland dotted on either side. Capitula mostly radiate, sometimes ± disciform. Involucre hemispherical. Phyllaries 2–seriate, 5 (–8) in each series, dimorphic, outer herbaceous to scarious, inner green, deciduous. Receptacles flat to conical, paleae cuneate to flabelliform, membranous, distally  papillate  or fimbrillate, all or atleast peripheral ones ± enfolding disc florets. Ray florets female, 5 (–8), fertile, white, ligule   glandular. Disc florets functionally male (sterile); limb infundibuliform, 5–lobed. Anthers connate, exerted. Cypselas oblanceolate, obovate or pyriform, often obcompressed, black, subtended by a phyllary and paleae and two adjacent disc florets paleae forming a corky disseminule. Pappus of 1–3 awns or of 2–short scales or sometimes absent.

A small genus of ca 16 species, distributed in North and Central America to South America and W. Indies. Represented in Pakistan by the following (naturalized) species.