Annual or perennial, 10–100 (–200) cm tall subshrubs. Stem prostrate or erect. Leaves cauline, opposite or subopposite, sessile or petiolate, lamina 1–3 or 5–nerved from bases, acerose, elliptic, lanceolate–linear, oblong or ovate, bases rounded to cuneate, margins entire, hairy on either side, often scabrous or scabrellous, usually gland–dotted. Capitula solitary, usually radiate, rarely ± discoid. Involucre campanulate, cylindric to hemispheric, 5–25 mm in diameter. Phyllaries persistent, 12–30, 3–4–seriate, orbiculate to obovate or oblong, unequal, often colored or distally dark–banded, outer shorter. Receptacle conical, paleate, paleae yellowish, often distally reddish to purplish, usually with scattered glands, chartaceous to scarious, conduplicate, apices rounded to acute, sometimes fimbriate. Ray florets usually 5–21 (more in "double" cultivars), 1–seriate, female, fertile, ligule yellow, orange, red, maroon, purple or white, with a very short tube or tube absent, becoming papery, fused with cypselas at the apex, persistent. Disc florets 20–150, bisexual, fertile. Corolla usually yellow to reddish, sometimes purple–tinged, tube much shorter than cylindric limb, lobes 5, lance–ovate, usually unequal, villous or velutinous adaxially. Cypselas heteromorphic, ray cypselas 3–angled, disc cypselas laterally compressed or flattened. Pappus absent, or persistent, of 1–3 (–4) awns or tooth–like scales.
A small genus of 25–28 species, mostly distributed in Mexico, North, Central and South–Eastern America. Following species is a garden favourite in Pakistan and elsewhere.