Mostly perennial, rhizomatous, broom-like, glabrous or arachnoid hairy or tomentose herbs with lactiferous calluses on the root and underground parts of the stem, simple or branched. Leaves in basal rosette or not, entire to runcinately lobed, middle and upper cauline leaves small and bract like. Capitula small, 5-13-flowered, numerous in groups, variously arranged, corymbose-paniculate to ± racemiform or sessile and solitatry along the stems. Receptacle flat, naked. Involucre narrowly cylindrical, 9-15 x 2-5 mm. Phyllaries 2-seriate, glabrous, arachnoid hairy or setulose, outer almost upto ¼ th of the inner phyllaries. Florets less than 15 in each capitulum, yellow with long, hairy tube. Anthers with short, entire or incised appendages at base, filaments glabrous. Style branches long, densely papillose. Cypselas homomorphic, ±cylindrical, longitudinally thickly 5-ribbed, ribs mostly with 3, secondary ribs, tuberculate or with scales from middle upwards forming a corona of 5 entire or ±3-lobed somewhat membranous scales; beak short to long, articulate at the base or above, easily breaking or detached from the joint alongwith pappus, sometimes absent. Pappus bristles simple, white, rarely faintly pale or brownish, scabrid.
A small genus of 25 species (Mabberley, 2008), distributed in C. and N. Europe, N. Africa, Middle East, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan to Central Asia. Represented in Pakistan by 3 species.
Excluded Taxa
Chondrilla graminea M. Bieb., Fl. Taur.-Cauc. 2: 244. 1808; Hook. f., Fl. Brit. Ind. 3: 402. 1881
This species was described from Caucasian-Caspian region and all or some of specimens cited from flora of Pakistan area by R. R. Stewart (op. cit. 730) may belong to C. setulosa. Kitamura (1964, l. c), reported it in error from Pakistan. Further studies may reveal interesting results.
Chondrilla piestocarpa Boiss., Fl. Orient. 3:793.1875.
R. R. Stewart (op. cit. 730) reports this species from Balochistan but its occurrence east of Iran seems doubtful.