Evergreen, small shrubs, usually without spinescent short-shoots. Leaves alternate, sometimes crowded and ± fasciculate, shortly petiolate, entire or with a few teeth at the apex, usually folded (conduplicate) at least when young, usually discolorous; stipules free to somewhat connate behind the petiole, persistent. Inflorescences comprising dense, contracted, cymose heads, usually terminal but often made lateral by vegetative growth from subtending buds, sometimes subtended by whitish floral leaves; bracts persistent, often larger than stipules. Flowers bisexual, 5-merous, ± sessile. Hypanthium usually produced into a free tube, persistent on fruit. Sepals usually ± spreading at anthesis. Petals cucullate, ± clawed, smooth, erect. Stamens subequal to petals, erect. Disc usually conspicuous, occasionally apparently lacking, shortly lining the base of the hypanthium tube and confluent with the adnate staminal filaments (except in S. sublineare), smooth, glabrous. Ovary usually inferior at anthesis; carpels 3; style almost entire to slightly lobed, glabrous. Fruit a schizocarpic capsule, the pyrenes splitting along the inner face to release the seeds. Seeds usually spotted or mottled, the lower 1/3–2/3 of the seed body covered by a translucent, membranous aril.
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