Annual to perennial, herbs or shrubs or small trees, usually rhizomatous or sometimes with corniform bases. Stems erect, mostly branched in the upper part or sometimes from the base also. Leaves basal or basal and cauline both or only cauline, opposite or alternate or both, 1–2 pinnate, petiolate or sessile, glabrous or hairy. Capitula radiate, often large and pedunculate, solitary or arranged in lax cymose panicles. Phyllaries dimorphic, usually 2–3–seriate, free or connate at the base, outer herbaceous with scarious margins, inner ones usually much larger, membranaceous to scarious. Receptacle flat to convex, paleate, paleae deciduous, ovate to linear subulate. Ray florets 1–seriate, neuter or styliferous and sterile, rarely female and fertile, ligules usually yellow in upper half, dark crimson below. Disc florets 8–150, bisexual, fertile, usually yellow, sometimes redish–brown to purple at tips or throughout, tubular, 4–5 lobed.  Cypselas  dorsally compressed, laterally 2–winged, wings membranous to papery, entire, lobed or toothed.  Pappus absent, or persistent of 2 bristly cusps or scales. 

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A genus of ca 35 species, distributed mainly in SW North America, also in Tropical America, Tropical Africa and Asia; some are introduced in gardens. Represented in Pakistan by 2 cultivated species.