Annual or perennial herb, 1-2 m high; with spiny-winged stems. Leaves rosulate to alternate, serrate, pinnatifid, teeth spinose. Capitula discoid, many-flowered, sometimes terminal, on long peduncles, sometimes subsessile or glomerate; involucre ovoid, globose or cylindric; bracts in many rows, patent or recurved, spiny. Receptacle densely setose. Florets bisexual, fertile; corolla white, tube narrowly cylindric below, dilated above. Anthers sagittate at base, adjacent auricles connate and produced into entire or lacerated tail. Style abruptly thickened above with ring of hairs below thickening; branches short, obtuse, minutely papillose. Flowering time Jan.? Pappus of scabrid to barbellate, deciduous bristles. Cypselae obovoid-oblong, smooth, glabrous, with apical rim.
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