Annual or perennial herbs. Stem usually fistulose, glabrous or glandular pubescent.Leaves simple, usually opposite, sometimes upper alternate, sessile or petiolate, blade narrowly elliptic to broadly ovate or hastate, crenate to strongly serrate, acute to slightly acuminate. Synflorescence very laxly cymose. Phyllaries 10–30, 2–seriate, ± overlapping, not distant, somewhat fused at base, equal to subequal. Receptacle covered with discrete oval, deeply concave scars. Florets 10–60. Corollas usually white, narrowly funnel form or differentiated into a basal tube and limb, limb broadly campanulate, usually hairy or glandular on outer surface, hairs often moniliform; lobes 5, ca. 1.5 times longer than wide, not papillose. Antheropodium usually strongly expanded below; anther appendages distinctly shorter than wide. Style shaft with or without long hairs, style arms elongated  slightly to strongly clavate, often forming most showy part of capitulum, fleshy, rounded at the apex. Cypselas slightly curved, usually 3–angled, without distinct ribs or 5–angled, often tuberculate or muricate; carpopodium forming a prominent asymmetrical knob. Pappus usually of 3 or 5 terete, clavate knobs, tip of knobs and upper outside surface covered with an elongated mass of viscid glands.

A small genus of ca 26 species, pantropical in distribution, following species is found in Pakistan.