Heads discoid, the fls all tubular and perfect; invol bracts several-seriate, the outer spiny, the inner with innocuous, elongate, eventually spreading, stramineous tip; receptacle flat, chaffy, its bracts connate below, each one split above into bristles; cor hardly divided into tube and limb, with short lobes; filaments glabrous; anthers with a firm, narrow, apical appendage, evidently tailed at the base; style with an abrupt change of texture below the very short, erect, papillate branches; achenes basifixed, cylindric, truncate, nerveless, densely hairy; pappus a single series of coarse, plumose bristles, these chaffy-flattened toward the base and tending to be irregularly connate into groups; spiny herbs with alternate, toothed to pinnatifid lvs and medium-sized to rather large heads. 28, Eurasia and n. Afr.
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