Upright, stout, biennial, densely spiny herbs, usually with spinose-winged internodes and dentate-pinnatisect or almost pinnatisect spinose leaves. Capitula large, 4 – 7 cm in diameter, homogamous, globose to ovoid, solitary or grouped in a corymbose synflorescence. Phyllaries multiseriate, densely imbricate, deeply serrulate, spine-tipped, glabrous to puberulous, occasionally glandular. Receptacle foveolate or deeply pitted, alveoli sinuate-denticulate, and ciliate on margins, naked, neither paleaceous nor long hairy. Florets bisexual, reddish, purple, pink or white. Corolla tubular, with 5-lobed, actinomorphic or saccate limb. Anthers with a subulate, terminal appendage, on free, papillose filaments. Cypselas obovoid-oblong, ± 4-angled, glabrous, 4 -5-ribbed, apically truncate or sometimes rimmed, often transversely rugose, hilum basal. Pappus multiseriate, outer united at base into a ring, bristles scabrid, barbellate or plumose (lateral projections of some pappus hairs more than twice as long as rachis width), deciduous.
A genus of about 50 species, distributed in Southern Europe, North Africa, South-West and Central Asia; represented in Pakistan by 2 species.