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Annual herb, up to 0.3 m high; sometimes shrubby. Leaves usually alternate, petiolate, simple, lobed or pinnately dissected, margins entire. Capitula unisexual. Male capitula in leafless spikes or racemes, usually drooping, hyaline, many-flowered; involucre cup-shaped; bracts connate. Receptacle with filiform paleae or epaleate. Corolla tubular, campanulate above, 5-lobed. Anthers ± free, with incurved, linear apical appendage, base entire. Style undivided, truncate, penicillate. Ovary abortive. Female capitula sessile, solitary or clustered in upper leaf axils below males, 1-flowered; involucre enveloping cypsela and becoming indurated, turbinate, with 4-6 spines, linear, papillose style branches exserted. Flowering time Feb.? Cypselae ovoid, smooth.
Erect perennial herb 20–75 cm high, with long stolons. Leaves opposite or alternate, 6–9 cm long, 4–6 cm wide, bipinnately divided; lobes linear to narrowly oblong, lacy, covered with long white hairs, grey. Male capitula 2.5–3.0 mm diam., of 7–10 (–19) florets; involucral bracts fused for 75–100% of their length; corollas ±glabrous. Female capitula 1 or few together, each with 1 floret, sessile. Conceptacle obpyramidal, 3.5 mm long, with 2–5 very short irregular teeth, and a terminal beak, lacking raised reticulate veins on surface, sparsely pilose, eglandular or with only sparse glands.
