Perennial, occasionally rosulate, rarely acaulescent, glabrous, hispid or glandulose herbs with solitary or many, mostly foliaceous stems. Leaves petiolate, subentire or lyrately pinnate, pinnatipartite to pinnatisect to bipinnatisect, with dentate lobes. Capitula (3-) 7- 40-flowered, sessile or on short to long, thin peduncles, often nodding, borne in corymbose-shaped or panicle-like synflorescence. Involucre narrowly cylindric to broadly campanulate. Phyllaries mostly multiseriate, glabrous or softly to stiffly hairy, outer ones nearly more than half as long as inner, subequal, more or less linear-lanceolate to linear phyllaries. Receptacle naked. Florets bluish or purplish, sometimes yellow and rarely white. Cypselas much compressed, elliptical to rarely ± cylindric or fusiform and poorly compressed, (4-) 5 principal ribs two of which strongly broadened and none or 2 thin, apically truncate, attenuate, or stout-beaked, brown or some shade of brown. Pappus usually white, uniseriate and of scabrid bristles or biseriate with an outer row of minutes bristles.
A medium-sized, recently resurrected, genus of c. 60-80 species, distributed in Africa, Middle East, Central and SW Asia and China. Represented in Pakistan by 14 species.