Annual to perennial taprooted herbs, glabrous or with simple hairs; stem erect, usually solitary. Leaves sessile, basal and cauline, alternate, entire, parallel-veined. Capitula terminal, solitary or few in loose corymbs; involucre cylindric to campanulate, bracts 1-seriate, narrow-lanceolate, c. equal, herbaceous, enlarged in fruit; receptacle convex, naked, pitted. Florets ligulate, bisexual, yellow or purplish; ligule linear, 5-toothed; anthers tailed at base, with minute triangular apical appendages; style bilobed, with linear, terete, papillose branches. Cypselas ellipsoid-fusiform, ribbed or smooth, often muricate or scabrous, with a long filiform beak ending in a woolly collar and small disc; pappus 2-seriate, of free plumose bristles, outer series rarely scale-like, persistent.
About 110 species, from Europe, south-west and central Asia and northern Africa; 2 species naturalised in Australia.
