Annual to perennial herbs or rosetted shrublets or spinescent subshrubs with tap roots or rootstocks. Stem weak, procumbent to ascending or erect and densely divaricately branched with stiff shoots. Leaves usually in basal rosette in young plants, sessile, entire to pinnatifid, cauline leaves amplexicaul, auriculate, mostly sinuate-dentate to pinnately dissected, rarely bipinnatifid, with white cartilaginous teeth. Capitula (5-) 7 - 40 (-100)-flowered, mostly numerous, borne in corymb-shaped or panicle-like synflorescence, very rarely capitula solitary; peduncles few to several bracteate, usually patent-erect, becoming indurate and ± spinescent after fruit fall, rarely very small. Involucre cylindrical, rarely ± globose. Phyllaries multiseriate, ± imbricate, much shorter, outer ½ to ¾ as long as inner subequal, linear-lanceolate to ovate, acute. Receptacle naked, pitted, the pits often toothed or ciliate margined. Florets with apically hairy corolla tube and ligules usually pale-yellow to yellow, narrowly spathulate to linear. Anther tubes obtuse above and with sagittate appendages at the base. Style branches long, slender, yellow with yellow or blackish hairs. Cypselas ± cylindrical to angular-prismatic, truncate or rarely with very short beak at the top, mono- or dimorphic, 4-10-ribbed, outermost cypselas often ± compressed and curved, glabrous or papillate, with smooth ribs or various types of transverse wrinkles. Pappus mono- or dimorphic, outer soft, cottony hairy, inner setaceous hairy or all same, deciduous or persistent.
A genus with 54 species (Mabberley, 2008), distributed in South Europe, Africa, Central, South and S W Asia and China. Represented in Pakistan by 11 species.