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Annual or biennial herbs; stems erect, sparsely to strongly branched, longitudinally striate; wings present, spinose. Leaves oblong, pinnatilobed; margins with numerous spine-tipped lobes and lobules. Capitula pedunculate or sessile, homogamous. Involucral bracts spine-tipped, entire or rarely pectinate (not in Australia). Receptacle flat or convex, not alveolate, densely setose. Corolla purple; tube filiform; lobes linear. Anther filaments free, pilose. Style branches connate, erect. Achenes obloid-obovoid, smooth, glabrous, with narrow apical rim; carpopodium basal. Pappus deciduous, of numerous barbellate capillary bristles, basally united in a ring.
Annual or perennial herbs. Stems spiny-winged. Leaves dentate-pinnatisect, spiny. Capitula solitary, corymbose or variously clustered, often subtended by reduced, bract-like leaves; phyllaries multiseriate, the outermost shorter than the inner. Florets sometimes with corolla slightly zygomorphic through one deeply split-off lobe; anther filaments pilose. Achenes smooth, glabrous, with an apical rim; pappus of deciduous scabrid or barbellate bristles, basally connate in a ring.
Florets hermaphrodite; corollas purple, pink or white, deeply 5-lobed (sometimes ± 2-lipped); anther bases sagittate, adjacent auricles connate and produced into an entire or lacerated tail; style shortly and obtusely 2-lobed, abruptly thickened below the fork with a ring of hairs below the thickening.
Involucre globose or campanulate, glabrous to densely araneose; phyllaries imbricate in many series, ± deflexed in the upper part, coriaceous or scarious, narrowly lanceolate and spine-tipped, margins entire scabrous or ± ciliate (serrate or fimbriate).
Much like Cirsium, differing chiefly in its pappus of merely capillary, not at all plumose bristles; stem commonly spiny-winged; achenes quadrangular or somewhat flattened, with 5–10 or more nerves, or nerveless. 100, Old World.
Achenes glabrous, ovate-oblong, somewhat angled with a raised annular collar at the apex, attachment-scar basal and oblique or ± horizontal; pappus many-seriate of scabrid setae united at the base.
Leaves usually decurrent on the stem, pinnatifid in the Flora Zambesiaca area (or undivided and serrate, or sinuate-dentate to 2-pinnatisect), spinescent at the margins.
Capitula homogamous, discoid, in dense terminal clusters, sometimes solitary.
Stems erect, simple, or branched above, usually spiny-winged.
Receptacle flat or convex, pitted, densely setose.
Perennial or annual herbs.
