Berkheya Ehrh.

Shrubby or herbaceous, often thistle-like, perennial. Leaves alternate, sometimes decurrent and stems winged, occasionally forming a pseudo-rosette, margins of wings and leaves spiny. Inflorescence solitary, racemose or subcorymbose; capitula eradiate or more usually radiate, showy; phyllaries multiseriate, usually spreading, the middle usually the longest, connate at base, ± stiff and variably spiny, spinescent, occasionally unarmed and spinescent; receptacle flat or shallowly domed, pitted, pits with scarious entire, dentate or erose walls sometimes produced into spines or scales. Ray florets sterile or absent, when present in 1 series, spreading, yellow rarely white, entire with 5–10 veins and up to 5 teeth, ray narrowing into tube in lower part; staminodes usually present; disc florets bisexual, fertile, regular, tubular, enlarged above, normally 5-partite; anthers united, bases sagittate with obtuse to acuminate tails or auricled; styles forked (undivided in sterile florets) with narrow branches rounded at apex; all florets variably hyaline-multicellular-hairy. Achenes set in pits, obovoid or more often turbinate, clearly or indistinctly ribbed, glabrous to long silky-hairy; pappus persistent, (exserted from pits), forming a usually sub-biseriate, rarely uni-or multi-seriate corona to the achene; pappus scales briefly connate at base, scarious, glabrous to hairy often dentate or erose.