Annual to perennial herbs, shrubs or climbers, latex usually lacking, with simple, T–shaped, stellate or glandular hairs. Leaves sessile or petiolate, alternate, occasionally opposite or ternate, mostly pinnately nerved, often with glandular dots, entire or serrate–dentate. Capitula discoid or pseudo–radiate, homogamous, mostly borne in terminal cymose panicles or on short lateral axillary branches, rarely in globose heads. Phyllaries usually 3–6–many seriate, imbricate, herbaceous, scarious or leathery. Receptacle flat or ± convex, mostly epaleate, rarely fimbriate. Florets all bisexual, fertile, actinomorphic, rarely zygomorphic. Corollas tubular to narrowly campanulate, bluish or reddish purple or pink, occasionally yellow or white, 5–lobed. Anther base bifid, appendages flat, thin to stiff. Style branches usually long and slender, papillate on the inner surface, apically subulate or acute. Cypselas cylindric or a little flattened, 5–10–ribbed or 4–5–angled. Pappus persistent, often 2–seriate, usually of long capillary bristles, rarely coroniform or absent.

A large and difficult tribe consisting of over 1600 species in 118 genera, distributed mainly in tropics of old and new world. Represented in Pakistan by 3 genera with a single species in each genus.