Erect, annual or perennial herbs or rarely ± shrubs, usually branched from the base to upwards. Leaves petiolate or sessile, alternate, entire to pinnatifid, villous to rarely glabrous. Capitula terminal or axillary, solitary, radiate or discoid, heterogamous. Involucres hemispheric to almost rotate. Phyllaries multiseriate, herbaceous or papery, persistent, free throughout acute to acuminate and reflexed in fruit. Receptacles convex to hemispheric, pitted or smooth, stiffly paleate. Ray florets absent or 5–15, large and spectacular, usually neuter, rarely female and fertile with showy, yellow, red or purple, or often bicoloured ligules, occasionally ray corollas 5–lobed and funnel–shaped. Disc florets bisexual, fertile, yellow to red or purplish brown, tubes shorter than the throat, lobes 5, broadly deltate. Anthers ecaudate at base. Style branches long, tapered, glabrous or hairy. Cypselas obpyramidate to clavate, ± 4–angled, densely antrorse, hairy throughout or near the base only. Pappus of 5–10, of  laterally scarious scales, usually persistent.

A genus of about 20–25 species, distributed in N. America, Mexico, Argentina; 2 species, introduced in gardens of old world, naturalized elsewhere. Represented in Pakistan by 2 cultivated species.