Annual to perennial, simple or branched herbs with simple and 2-hooked (anchor-shaped), rigid and glochidiate hairs. Leaves sessile to petiolate, alternate, all in basal or ± basal rosette or both basal and cauline, sinuate and unlobed to pinnatilobed, upper leaves gradually reduced, cordate or amplexicaul. Capitula pedunculate, 20-50-flowered, homogamous,  borne in lax terminal raceme-like corymbs or panicles. Receptacle  naked, pitted. Involucre  ± cylindric to campanulate-urceolate.  Phyllaries 2 to multiseriate, imbricate, outer ones 1-2 seriate and gradually longer inwards, usually half to two third as long as subequal, linear-lanceolate to linear, inner  1-seriate. Florets with 5-toothed, yellow ligules. Anthers sagittate at the base, with minute triangular appendages at apices. Style branches slender. Cypselas more or less homomorphic, ellipsoid-fusiform or terete, 5-10- ribbed, slightly sulcate without beak or with very short beak, narrowed at both ends, transversely wrinkled.  Pappus white or dirty white, composed of  fimbriately plumose bristles, 1- seriate, connate at the base into a ring, deciduous, sometimes 2-seriate, the outer series much smaller and scabrous.

A genus consisting of c. 40-50 species (Mabberley, 2008), mainly distributed  in the Mediterranean region and SW Asia; a few species occur in tropical Africa, E and S Asia and Australasia. Represented in Pakistan by 3 species