Annual, biennial or perennial, usually bitter-aromatic or non-aromatic, glabrous, hairy or punctate-glandulose herbs or small to large shrubs with tap root or horizontal rootstock. Leaves alternate, basal large and petiolate, upper often subsessile to sessile, undivided or toothed-shallowly to deeply incised or lobed, palmati- or pinnatipartite or 2-4-pinnatisect. Synflorescence a panicle, sometimes racemoid or spicate, occasionally globoid or fascicled. Capitula generally numerous, small, rarely mediocre, nodding or erect, oblong-cylindrical or ovate to almost globose, heterogamous. Involucre ovoid to campanulate or hemispherical; phyllaries in 2-4 (-6)-series, imbricate, hairy or glabrous, inner ones mostly scarious-margined or scarious. Receptacle plane, convex, conical or hemispherical, glabrous or pilose. Flowers brownish, reddish or yellowish, all tubular. Ray-florets: pistillate and fertile; corolla narrowly tubular, generally tapering upwards, 2-3 (-4)-toothed, ± oblique, eligulate; style exserted, 2-cleft, branches recurved, linear-filiform and terete-oblong, ± flattened. Disc-florets bisexual, fertile or sterile; corolla tubular to ± campanulate or funnel-shaped, 5-toothed; anthers oblong, longer than the filaments, obtuse or ± cordate at the base, apical appendages lanceolate or subulate; style exserted or included, either 2-cleft with flat, truncate and apically erose or fimbriate, ± recurved branches or columnar with an erose or fimbriate disc or cup at the apex. Cypselas of both marginal and discs (when fertile) terete, oblong-ellipsoid or obovoid to nearly fusiform-prismatic, faintly many-striate or smooth, glabrous, apically rounded or truncate. Pappus absent or sometimes cypselas with a minute annulus or scarious corolliform ring.