Annual or perennial herbs. Leaves sessile, alternate, spathulate, tomentose. Capitula small, disciform, usually arranged in axillary clusters forming more or less interrupted leafy spikes or in head-like clusters; phyllaries brownish to pale brownish, scarious. Outer florets purple, female, filiform, outnumbering the central bisexual florets. Corolla of bisexual florets narrowly tubular to campanulate, 5-lobed. Cypselas ± oblong, sparsely papillose with globose myxogenic twin hairs; pappus setae connate at base in a ring-like structure, falling as a unit.