Description from Flora of China Herbs, shrubs, or trees,
sometimes climbing; indumentum of simple or T-shaped hairs and
sessile globose glands. Leaves alternate, rarely opposite,
petiolate or subsessile, often ill-defined, margin entire,
serrate, or dentate, pinnately veined. Synflorescence terminal
or axillary, paniculate, densely clustered to laxly corymbose,
sometimes thyrsoid, racemelike, or reduced to solitary
capitulum. Involucre bowl-shaped to narrowly cylindric;
phyllaries imbricate, to 6-seriate, often with scarious margins,
apex obtuse, acute, or acuminate into spinescent or threadlike
tip, outer phyllaries shorter, inner occasionally caducous.
Receptacle flat, areolate, naked or sometimes shortly hairy.
Florets (1-)3-100+; corolla pink, purplish, rarely white,
narrowly tubular, often glandular, with campanulate or
campanulate-funnelform limb; lobes 5. Anthers hastate, obtusely
auricled. Style branches subulate, puberulent. Achenes cylindric
or obconical, mostly with (7-)10 well-defined ribs, less o