Onopordum
Annual or biennial herbs, often robust, spiny; stems erect or rarely absent, winged. Leaves basal or cauline, alternate, margins toothed to pinnatisect, spiny, auriculate to stem-clasping. Capitula ovoid to globose, terminal, solitary or in corymbose cluster; involucral bracts in several series, imbricate, herbaceous, unequal, with a spinose apical appendage; receptacle flat, naked, with apically fringed pits. Florets bisexual, fertile, tubular, more or less equal, pink or purple; corolla deeply 5-lobed, glabrous or glandular; anthers sagittate at base, with subulate appendages at apex; style bilobed, with appressed linear terete branches, apices diverging. Cypselas obovoid-obloid, somewhat 4- or 5-angled, glabrous; pappus of 1–several series of barbellate or plumose bristles united in a ring at base, deciduous as a single unit.
About 60 species, in Europe, central and south-western Asia and northern Africa; 4 species naturalised in Australia.
Jeanes, J.A. (1999). Asteraceae. In: Walsh, N.G.; Entwisle, T.J., Flora of Victoria Vol. 4, Cornaceae to Asteraceae, pp. 652–666. Inkata Press, Melbourne.
Spinning
